A few days ago, I had a luxurious fifteen minutes to myself with which to do as I would and discovered a segment of a podcast with new farm director Andy McKay. Being of significant curiosity and questionable overall mental health, I naturally leapt at the opportunity and donned a pair of bulky headphones in order to best experience it. To be frank, there aren’t often a lot of instances in which major front office types are eager to give away trade secrets, and this was no different. Much of the intrigue of listening involved trying to reconstruct what was going on in the background, as McKay either was preparing lunch or unloading a dishwasher as he fielded the interview. Details were vague and commentary on specific players, far vaguer, but I did come away with two major notes that sparked my attention.

Taking account of his prior role as a mental skills coach for the Colorado Rockies, the interviewers gravitated towards the expected question of “how do you prepare pitchers to do well in Coors Field?” This would be the kind of secret that I think anyone would be fascinated to learn regardless of their rooting inclinations, but McKay’s responses were ones of refutation, claiming that it never really came up and that it wasn’t something that they ever talked about at length. In so many words, what is known as the characteristic of the home park was blown off as if it were nothing and McKay mentioned in passing the bewildering and unusual success that some pitchers had experienced, running reverse splits in some rare instances. Otherwise, so far as he was concerned, both teams had to deal with it.

You may be sensing what piqued my interest here. If the org didn’t really talk about it, you might think of it as a possible bête noire, something verboten to speak of in public and only heard of in hushed tones. Or, the alternative could be to invest a great deal of attention into rendering it the subject of nightmares, only to be overcome by the toughest and manliest of pitchers. McKay flatly stated that the media had more interest in the subject than anyone else he talked to. It was no big deal to him.

The material circumstances might be different, but let’s consider the previous runs of GMs with regard to their attitudes about Safeco Field. Despite the offensive successes of the Gillick-era Mariners, there started to be real concerns thereafter with much chatter about batting eyes and the left field walls. It has been rumored that fan-favorite Adrian Beltre thereafter cautioned power hitters against signing in Seattle. As the Zduriencik regime started to settle into being definitively in the mindset of its egg-shaped namesake, the articulated goal was often to acquire players whose power was so transcendent that it could overcome any park, Safeco included. The only major success we’ve experienced on that front is Nelson Cruz, and Zduriencik is no longer the GM of any team.

It would be too much to link one thing to another, but when you look at some of the drafting tendencies we’ve had, major raw RH power has been a trademark, likely operating under the assumption that an organization ought to develop what it is unlikely to acquire via free agency. Alex Jackson. Tyler O’Neill. Mike Zunino. D.J. Peterson. Gabby Guerrero. Tyler Marlette. Corey Simpson. The list can go on, if you allow it to. And subsequently, all these players have had noted struggles in recent years, with a late-season rebound by O’Neill being a plus followed by a question mark. In many cases, the strikeouts and level of contact have been so poor as to make their major league futures suspect regardless of raw ability. To hear McKay speak of Coors Field dismissively and cite pitchers who had reverse splits makes me wonder if, in whatever way, the public talk by the Mariners figureheads about getting that bury-the-needle power in turn got into the heads of their major prospects, who tried and failed to do too much with it. This is purely inference on my part with little means to corroborate with anything tangible, but having made the connection, one does wonder.

The second part that interested me was the specific circumstances of McKay’s coaching life. He claimed that he had managed enough over his career (also citing his MBA and organizational background) to connect with players and earn their trust regardless of what role he held. Baseball, he claimed, was “100% mental,” and “the body follows the mind.” Both statements read/hear like sports platitudes for the perky young postgame interviewer. Not much to write home about, that is until the later conversation about creating a culture and being hands-on in the dugout and then some other actually interesting notes arose.

McKay’s coaching career runs like this: In the summers, he was stationed in the Northwoods League, a wood-bat circuit comparable to though without the media attention of the Cape Cod League. During the rest of the year, he was in community colleges, coaching players with the intent of preparing them for D-I transfers. In both cases, players often came in with specific needs and McKay needed to address them in limited time frames, a few months or a few years, and then send them off better to the next thing.

It would be presumptuous to say something like “he’s going to turn around the system in a heartbeat! Our savior!” and then have an assortment of cartoon hearts spraying out of my eyes. I’m not that naïve. But the idea of being able to identify needs in a short timeframe and work with directed attention on them would appear to be an asset. To boot, he brought up other issues that were points of contrast with the prior administration, not calling them out by name, but saying that a system that was all about individual development at the expense of winning could risk having players that didn’t know what to do to get the team to win once they reached the majors. It’s an easy slide from there into an armchair sports psychology that would point to, I don’t know, Ackley’s deer-in-headlights expression at times, and to claim that a focus on individual development might, at its most warped, tempt a player into thinking that the weight of the organization was on their shoulders, which simply isn’t healthy. I don’t know if I can extrapolate that either based on the information that we have, but I can say that the dismal state of the farm system with regard to winning percentage has made following it a tougher sell and I could be drawn in by promises of positive records and lesser playoff runs building up to greater ones.

Having nervously tiptoed into the waters that may serve to re-baptize me into a more ardent, born-again fandom, I would do well to bring it all back to something less superstitious and more overt in content. When asked about the state of the Mariners farm system specifically, McKay claimed that it was easier coming in because the lack of emotional ties meant you could make some stone-cold decisions if you had to, which syncs up with some of the trades that went on in the offseason. But the point at which I stopped the podcast, scrolled back, and made sure I got every word was when this quote came out:

“I believe in the players that we have and I believe that the players we have will make strides, but I like to consider myself a realist. We have real challenges in front of us. This is not a system that is thriving right now. The deficiencies are easy to identify. We’ve identified them and are willing to get to work on them.”

As the BA list implied, the Mariners are in a bad way right now with regard to depth. Many things that were expected to not suck have instead resembled shop-vacs attached to uninterrupted power supplies. We aren’t likely to be metaphorically skipping through the meadow amidst the rainbows of a joyful 2016 season, but those in power now seem to have their convictions about what was wrong in the process of how the team operated previously. They have articulated what they aim to do in response to it. Now all we need is data.

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]]>3716BA Remembers Names of Ten Mariners Prospectshttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2016/01/22/ba-remembers-names-of-ten-mariners-prospects/
Fri, 22 Jan 2016 17:58:58 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=22240Whether it’s diminishing returns on the player development front or merely that the PhD student lifestyle clamors for the lion’s share of my attention, I’ve found myself more tuned out from the minor league goings-on in recent years than I was while blogging about it on a semi-regular basis. The initial enthusiasm of following an organization focused on developing its own players took several heavy hits during the Zduriencik era, as we found many individuals, Ackley and Zunino among them, go from “the hope for the future” to “recurrent sources of frustration.” As one might expect, being excited about player development generally and being a fan of a team that looked to be unambiguously bad at it are not compatible viewpoints, and so my attentions scurried off elsewhere.

And yet, with recent sports losses in the rearview and the promise of new organizational philosophies at play, baseball has a way of dragging me back into the discussion like the often-spurned but lovelorn devotee that I am. Friends, let us talk about baseball. Let us talk about baseball and player development in the context of the fact that Baseball America released their Top Ten Mariners Prospects today. You want that I should copy and paste so you don’t have to click? Fine.

If I might be honest while, at the same time, flippant, prospect lists have been previously released in this offseason and I have shared them with friends, captioning the links with “hey kids, wanna see a dead body?” It’s a dick move on my part (perhaps less blunt than others), so allow me to qualify that by saying that such remarks tend to reflect more on the nature of prospect lists than anything else. Young players like Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, and Ketel Marte have “graduated” to a big league level where it is no longer the business of prospect-watchers to think about them regularly (also Kivlehan might’ve ranked pretty high *shakes fist*). They represent some of the few successes of the past season as the recent season was, mysteriously, one in which a great deal of young players struggled.

When things like this happen en masse, concerns arise as to how systemic they are and we start to question methods and the like, methods which have been blissfully supplanted by regime change. In short, we know that the minor leaguers performed poorly, but without knowing why, we can’t answer how easily it might be fixed and don’t know what to do with the data we have. Adding to that, recency bias means we’ve been sitting with these lackluster performances since September. Dudes are probably working on things that we don’t even know about yet, but without some way of quantifying that, we are stuck with the overcast “bleh.” It’s not all storm clouds and inclement weather, as we acquired some good pieces at the trade deadline and during the recent draft. However, when you look at the system at large, the stocks of individual players, for however you regard their ceilings, are widely at lows.

What this leaves one with is what you could generally characterize as a “bad system prospect list.” It’s a who’s-who of guys with intriguing physical abilities who have yet to perform, dotted with a smattering of recent draftees who performed well in a sample size too small to make adequate sense of. Anyone who has payed attention to minor league happenings in the long term can name one or two players who had intriguing debuts in the NWL and went on to do nothing particularly special thereafter. Factors such as Drew Jackson’s pure athleticism and the alleged change he made to his contact lenses might bolster what hope you have for him being the SS of the future (or SS that gets moved to CF of the future), yet you can recognize that you need more data to go off of in order to move forward. I rather liked our ’15 draft from a depth standpoint and building up pitching reserves, but it remains to be seen how many of those HS pitchers are going to survive the transition to pro ball.

Elsewhere, as I said, it’s the guys with velocity or power, some prior tool of significance that helped to get them on the radar in the first place. Comparing this year’s list to last year’s, Alex Jackson retains top billing, but you can’t exactly say that he proved himself worthy of the distinction. Kivlehan, Gabby Guerrero, and Carson Smith are all trade casualties (Guerrero missed Arizona’s Top Ten, Kivlehan is likely for Texas’ top ten), Marte graduated, and Austin Wilson’s second half wasn’t quite enough to redeem a rather dismal first half. Diaz isn’t moving up from #6 to #2 with a bullet so much as he’s rising thanks to attrition. Peterson plummeted despite not having a great deal of competition elsewhere. Tyler O’Neill really helped himself out, but we’re also talking about a prospect who has struck out in the neighborhood of 30% of the time.

The good news? Darkest before dawn? Only place to go is up? Any number of cliches and platitudes in a similar vein? Yeah, and it all feels true in this case. We still have some of the same draft people involved while most of the development pieces are new, but in a way, that seems to be saying that the drafts the Mariners had weren’t inherently bad so much as there were things that weren’t coming through in the development process. To retain McNamara, at least for the time being, demonstrates some level of confidence in what he’s done and the belief that the new team can help recover the lost value these prospects had. For all of the past year’s shortcomings, Alex Jackson and O’Neill still have elite power, Edwin Diaz still has a high-end FB/slider combo, Gohara has solid velocity for a lefty, Powell can take a pitch, and Bishop can play a mean CF. The question is where the Mariners go from there so that these fellows don’t slot themselves in as role players and little else.

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]]>3715Mariners Send Passive-Aggressive Message to Their Exeshttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/12/29/mariners-send-passive-aggressive-message-to-their-exes/
Tue, 29 Dec 2015 23:31:34 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=22210Post-Winter Meetings and pre-Spring Training represents a news lull where the only thing you might otherwise have to hope for are prospect lists and the ever-thrilling arbitration negotiations in which a player may or not be shit-talked about by his co-workers and superiors. Being a time of planning, recuperation, and internal inventories, you can occasionally get the landmark release of boilerplate organizational philosophy or possible rebranding as the most loyal of the base eagerly open the next door on their Fanfest advent calendar. As such, the Mariners announced a new campaign to Control the Zone as part of the new regime’s restructuring.

For anyone who has been interested in analytics, since, I don’t know, the last time the Mariners made the playoffs, the information wasn’t revelatory. Throw good strikes. Force other pitchers to throw good strikes. Profit, as success on both fronts would serve to maximize winning potential. I’m not going to pretend like this is anything new to any of the regular readers of this here blog, but going so far as to publically articulate a vision isn’t something that we should undersell. It’s a pretty big paradigm shift, even if the packaging is a lot of blue, quick cuts between people smiling and shaking hands as baseball stuff occurs, and run-of-the-mill uplifting, inspirational music.

Parsing it out a bit into discrete categories, you can see a contrast developing between the previous administration and the current one which bring to light. Immediately, there’s an emphasis on getting pitchers to be able to throw quality secondary offerings for strikes even when behind in the count. Having likewise articulated a concern about mental preparation and frame of mind, one might imagine that the new group might be less inclined to piss on Erasmo Ramirez merely for not being their platonic ideal of a pitcher. There are additional goodies from there, such as Servais talking about how the batting average on 2-1 is almost double what it is on 1-2, with a clever little B-R citation, but the major shots fired were in the realm of crafting an organizational identity.

Claiming, as DiPoto did, that “development should not stop once you’ve reached the major league level” is as cold and accurate a take as you’re going to get on the results achieved by the previous group, particularly with regard to hitting. Talking about how important it is to have a consistent terminology and communication flow from one level to the next, how playing one minor league affiliate should be representative of playing the whole organization, this all signals how divergent the communication must have been in the previous coaching and how players were getting mixed signals and messages, sometimes encountering something that worked well for them and sometimes not. It doesn’t completely serve to explain what was a complete institutional collapse last season, but filtering things through multiple personnel with some oversight in offensive and defensive coordinators as we are now should serve to achieve greater consistency in message.

One should bear in mind that change rarely comes to industries that believe that they are doing just fine on their own. Rather, it’s entirely logical to infer that the old boys network of baseball past had functioned okay while it was ubiquitous, providing little incentive to shake things up. This type of thinking never permeated the sport because there was never a need for it as long as everyone was exercising the same biases and mistakes in thinking. Changes have been occurring throughout baseball for the last decade plus. In this instance, we just get to belatedly participate in it, as opposed to self-destructively fantasizing about whether or not it would actually be worse to have Amaro as our GM as we have been. If you want some added schadenfreude, you might also consider what DiPoto is executing now as an indictment of the kind of thinking that has been guiding the Angels organization in recent years.

The reflexive response to this sort of material would be to respond to the array of clichés offered with one more: Talk is cheap. Yet, if the talk is at least attempting to guide the team into a more progressive direction, we can hope that it will eventually find its way to a proper execution. I’m still more than a little irked about trading Patrick Kivlehan to the Rangers as a PTBNL, having long anticipated crafting a sign that read “KIVVLES AND HITS” and staking out some place in the bleachers. But for all the wheeling and dealing that was done over the offseason, we’ve retained a lot of the major prospects like Alex Jackson and D.J. Peterson and Tyler O’Neill, all of whom could benefit from some on-base related instruction. Relatively little of what was dealt was near-term in contribution, or major in its prospect status. A more coherent system of instruction could go a long way in reclaiming some of the earlier value that some of these pieces formerly had. We’re in it for a bit of a haul and we’re not going to rebuild the minor league depth overnight, but we at least know that we’re now moving in a direction that cannot be simplified into “Dingers are The Truth. Hit Dingers. Never give them up. Zduriencik 2014″.

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]]>3712Mariners and Brewers Swap Bench Depth, Finalize 40-Manhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/11/20/mariners-and-brewers-swap-bench-depth-finalize-40-man/
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 18:48:42 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=22141Three posts in a row by me? Madness. So, the Mariners have announced a trade of OF Ramon Flores to the Brewers in exchange for IF Luis Sardinas, thus exchanging two players that you have likely never heard of.

Flores is a guy whom you probably wouldn’t be as aware of had you tuned out mid-season. For those of you just joining us, welcome! We have a new GM who does not espouse a depressing baseball philosophy! Flores was acquired with right-hander Jose Ramirez as part of the Dustin Ackley trade that sent the former first-rounder to the Yankees. Also, Dustin Ackley is gone. Ramon Flores has a similar offensive profile to that of recently-added outfielder Boog Powell with some added power, except that Flores has the unflattering profile of being a tweener, neither providing enough offense for the corner nor possessing good enough wheels to justify playing him in center on a routine basis. Being that he was out of options, I had tentatively penciled him in to be the team’s back-up outfielder, but given that he broke his ankle at the end of the season, he was neither expected to be ready in time for spring training nor capable of playing to the best of his abilities once he got there. It’s not a ligament injury, obviously, but ankle is still part of the larger leg thing and for a guy who had range questions in the first place, well…

Sardinas is formerly of the Rangers system, where you can make further connections to our existing staff, Bogar, etc. He was signed in 2009 for seven figures and was regarded as one of the top defensive shortstops on the market at the time, which has held and made him a component in the Gallardo trade. His promotion scheme over the years has been Zduriencik-like insofar as he’s been at least two years younger than league-average everywhere he’s played so far and reached triple-A around the time he reached legal drinking age. He’s proven himself over the years to be a guy with a choppy swing who doesn’t tend to hit for more than doubles power. More positively, he’s also a switch-hitter and plays a plus defensive shortstop with good wheels to boot.

This will likely read as a move for bench depth, but we ought to bear in mind that Sardinas is still just 22, turning 23 in late April. To consider his offensive development as fully realized under the circumstances would be presumptuous. Hence, I look at him as a guy who could, if it comes to it, push for competition with Marte as to who starts at the major league level. Sardinas has an option year left and Marte has a few, so it certainly seems possible that he could be an okay piece to have around. Those of us who came of baseball-watching age in the late-90s/early-00s offensive boom among shortstops may be a little more lukewarm on the whole thing, but offense is down league-wide and so the projected production out of Sardinas isn’t terrible, as such.

While I was typing this up, the Mariners also finalized their 40-man roster, and I’m not so ambitious as to make two posts out of it considering the news is somewhat minor. OF Boog Powell and IF/OF Patrick Kivlehan, the two “locks” I identified earlier, were the two players that were added to the 40-man. To clear an additional roster spot, the Mariners designated former first-round pick LHP Danny Hultzen for assignment. Hultzen was a fairly obvious target for designation because he’s out of option years despite having pitched all of eight innings in the last two years of regular season, affiliated ball. The shoulder has proven to be a continuing issue for him, preventing him from having made his major league debut despite being drafted in 2011 and being thought of as near-major league ready then. Let us now fondly remember the meltdown that ensued after I drafted several possible write-ups on who the #2 pick would be, none of which were Hultzen. As major league baseball still had the ability to sign drafted players to major league contracts then, he thus burns through all his options without debuting. The good news is that that’s over with. The other maybe good news is that he could be safely outrighted provide nobody wants an almost-26 left-hander with a balky shoulder. Pause for laughter.

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]]>3700Mariners, Rangers Reconfigure Outfield and Bullpen Pileshttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/11/17/mariners-rangers-reconfigure-outfield-and-bullpen-piles/
Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:56:44 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=22135I have a rather uncanny knack for having my regularly-scheduled, irregularly-posted contributions here usurped by major deals or trades that have come to fruition without our prior awareness. Thus, it came to pass that Monday, the Mariners traded with Texas to acquire outfielder Leonys Martin and right-hander Anthony Bass while sending way once-closer Tom Wilhelmsen, stolen base prodigy James Jones, and a PTBNL who I can only assume is a man between the ages of eighteen and forty who has two thumbs and likes baseball a lot. You, friend, may be the player to be named later!

Over the week in which DiPoto has been in charge, we’ve seen moves made in an attempt to remake the team in his own image and philosophies. Whether or not this is a side effect of going mad with power after being released from the perpetual tutelage of one Mike Scoscia, the general idea has been an emphasis on playing more to the uniqueness of Safeco by emphasizing flyball pitching, plus defense, and on-base percentage to compensate where power may be less viable (rather unlike the previous attempts to get bury-the-needle levels of power that would overcome whatever circumstances). Martin helps to tick off the second category and, despite OPS generally below .700 for his career, he’s nonetheless been a positive WAR contributor by virtue of his excellent defensive skills.

One of the remarks made in the presser and by sports pundits afterward is that, while Martin had a down year last season, expecting him to bounce back isn’t outside reason. The offensive skillset the Cuban employs is primarily based on speed and contact and more rarely getting one into the gaps. Since his BABIP last year was below .300, uncharacteristic of his profile, one could be convinced that some positive regression is in order. Cruz and Bogar, who have both been around Martin, have vouched for his abilities, and familiarity with him in his better years makes rebound probable. Since very little of his game was about power, he likely won’t suffer much in Safeco. As for his position in the batting order, I would guess that with the discussion of OBP, we’re likely still looking tentatively at Marte leading off and Martin will serve to lengthen the lineup down at around 8 or 9.

The trade makes sense to me in the same way that the Austin Jackson trade made sense. From a player development and acquisition standpoint, the Mariners have long neglected their outfield depth, necessitating deals for such trivia question answers as Eric Thames and Trayvon Robinson and mercenary lummoxes-for-hire like Mike Morse. Even as outfielders started to be prioritized again, few have been viable everyday centerfield candidates and Braden Bishop, who would appear to be the best bet internally, is at least three years off. Martin helps us bridge the gap and provides a plus defender so that we aren’t shifting the burden directly on Boog Powell and an out-of-options Ramon Flores, whom I would tentatively pencil in as the back-up outfielder at this point.

Anthony Bass’ role might be defined less concretely as a member of the pile of limited material definition. One presumes that someone in the organization is familiar with him insofar as we’re again trading for a former Padres. Bass was a starter in the minors up through 2013 and in the majors has been a reliever with a three-pitch arsenal of fastball, slider, and change with velocity sitting in the low 90s. He’s a pitch-to-contact groundballer who probably walks a higher percentage than you might be comfortable with given the lower strikeouts. In the grander scheme of things, Benoit likely fills the higher-leverage roles that Wilhelmsen had and Bass will sop up innings in lower-leverage situations.

Within the larger organizational scheme, Bass helps the bullpen now while being a potential piece going forward. As noted in the 40-man preview, what with the perpetual trading away of relief resources, the Mariners are a bit thin on bullpen contributors in the near term. Farquhar and Leone are gone. Carson Smith is still here and a bit erratic. Guaipe hasn’t looked like an asset. Zych could be. And then there are guys like Jose Ramirez and Cody Martin… The situation isn’t great. Bass as a tertiary piece is useful, but he could end up being secondary or primary depending on how things shake out. In the interim, I would imagine that DiPoto is still looking to shore up the bullpen before February.

In trading Wilhelmsen, the Mariners lose one of their better arms from the bullpen and their best dancer (as far as I know). Tall Tom from Tucson had a rebound year for the Mariners in which he eventually helped solidify the back end of the bullpen while Fernando Rodney’s arrows went errant and struck hapless passers-by. He had the look of the Tom Wilhelmsen that had been so fun to watch in 2012, but as we’ve repeatedly noticed and hopefully learned, bullpen commodities can be volatile and a frequent reminder of the vagaries of chance and fate we are often oblivious to. For the Rangers, Wilhelmsen is the centerpiece, but they aren’t exactly buying low as the second-half of 2015 did a lot to repair his reputation. The roles Wilhelmsen played for the Mariners bullpen can be delegated to Benoit and others, but having that level of versatility in a single pitcher is a boon to any bullpen.

Of James Jones, there may be less to say other than Chris Gwynn is still somewhere, smiling about his reaching the majors as a position player and not a pitcher. The reality is that Jones’ elite speed and arm strength have not translated to good defensive play. In the minors, he played almost exclusively right field. For whatever stock you put into defensive metrics, the ones Jones has supplied to Fangraphs have stink lines rising up from them. If Rangers fans are interested, I can note that after having perennial issues with strikeouts, Jones ran close to an even K/BB in the minors this year. Whether he has the requisite power to keep pitchers honest is another matter, but there is at least a reason to think that his offense may eventually not be abysmal, as you wait for the defensive improvements that may or may not come.

This is another one of those trades that made sense for both parties involved. The Mariners improved their outfield depth significantly while losing some bullpen depth, the Rangers did the opposite, but one could argue that with the acquisition of Benoit, and even considering the loss of Farquhar, the Mariners had ability to maneuver in the bullpen whereas plus gloves in centerfield were probably going to be harder to come by. About as much as I have for summary is that DiPoto has wasted little time in restructuring the team. While I haven’t been elated by any of the moves, they’ve seemed like potential net positives in each case. We absolutely needed a centerfielder for at least the next three years, probably more than we needed a reliable arm in the bullpen, so I think that the early opinion favors Mariners on this one. Getcher warmed-over, next-day’s-breakfast takes, right here.

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This round of 40-man roster addition action is newly vexed by the consideration that the Mariners are under new general management. Certain core pieces remain, such as Tom McNamara, who served as architect for many of the drafts in consideration, but DiPoto and possibly even down to Scott Servais may have different opinions on what players are worth protecting than we’ve been accustomed to seeing. Ostensibly, with so much ink devoted to a broader notion of athleticism as a necessity in Safeco Field (one wonders how much Zduriencik was still planning around Miller Park), you might expect there to be a greater emphasis to protect those that are closer to that model. However, there has doubly been the player development concern of having so many high draft picks go on to achieve so little. The new player development director in Andy McKay has made compelling remarks in favor of the idea that while there are the rare exceptions who arrive on ability alone, the game could be as much as 90% mental and preparative. I don’t know how instructive the decisions to be made about the 40-man roster will be, seeing as how we might see the draft philosophy change in the coming seasons, but if nothing else, we might be able to step away from it and assess by the results which players are seen as part of the plan and which aren’t.

The familiar song-and-dance of it is that what we’ll be looking at here are college picks from the ’12 draft and high school and early international signings from around the summer of 2011. This means in some wacky parallel universe where different choices are made, the Mariners may be protecting Mike Zunino for the first time although I prefer the parallel universe in which we draft and somehow properly develop Carlos Correa. As usual, there’s also some level of ambiguity built-in to where it’s hard to tell which international signings had contracts for what year, so this is in some cases the best estimate on the information I have, although I can’t say that there’s much depth this season. Rosters will have to be finalized by November 20th, so, golly, you’ll have a few whole days to mull over what you would do with this immense responsibility that you have no say in.

I’m ordering this roughly through a sense of likelihood and am forgoing the exhaustive listing of who is and isn’t eligible because I’m short of time and it doesn’t seem to be worth it this year.

After a few years of putting up batting averages in the neighborhood of .300 and slugging percentages of around .500, many of us were curious where “the wall” might be for Kivlehan. As it turns out, “the wall” for most of the system turned out to be 2015, as operations unraveled on a systemic level for reasons I don’t think are fully understood outside of the organization. Kivlehan ended up providing value for the Rainiers thanks to the longball and stood as an above-average hitter in the PCL, but his rate of reaching base on unintentional walks or hits by pitch were the lowest they have ever been at 7.8% and strikeouts accounted for more than 20% of his plate appearances, which hadn’t happened since his debut season. Kivlehan is still well-liked for his leadership and hitting abilities and, having reached triple-A, it’s almost impossible to see the organization not protect him. The question is what they intend to do with him, given that the hot corner is a set position for the Mariners and that there may be a developing preference for better defenders.

While the arrival of new management can provide something to talk about, it doesn’t necessarily wipe the slate clean and there are often traces of dust left of the ill will borne towards the previous. Defense and on-base percentage were emphasized in Powell’s acquisition and getting it at an up-the-middle position is a boon. Yet, when the task came to think of possible comps, a few four-letter words came to mind. One of them was “Reed.” The track record for OBP-heavy players with limited power in the majors is not stellar, and Reed had more power than Powell does. Ramon Flores, whom we also have on the 40-man, also has more power while being in the same broad family of players. I think Powell all but a lock to be protected, but I’m still skeptical of his long-term value.

RHP Matt Anderson, 6’1″, 210 lbs, 11/18/1991
(AA) 3-5, 44 G (GS), 10 SV, 3.90 ERA in 67.0 IP, 64 H (5 HR), 63/23 K/BB, 4 HB, 9 WP
Pros: Often cited as having the best curveball in the system, cup of coffee in Tacoma at the end of the season, live stuff
Cons: Recent conversion to relief did little to tighten up his component numbers

Anderson is an oddball in that he was signed as a NDFA following the 2012 draft and his rise through the system since is the sort usually described in astronomical terms. The outside observer can still ascribe a certain logic to it, however. He was a two-way guy coming up through high school and his first few years of college (even winning Offensive Player of the Year and Gold Glove honors) before switching over to the mound full-time. This helps explain away some of the inconsistencies and gives him the look of a fresher arm, but it still seems weird that twenty-nine other orgs whiffed on him entirely in the draft when he was playing at Long Beach State. The organization has been thin on relief pitching after trading from it for so many years and Anderson isn’t too far off, but his statistics also can be read like those of a guy who will spend much of his career living off spring training NRI contracts.

I don’t know how much thought I’d devote to Pizzano were we still under Zduriencik administration, but seeing as how he’s been the subject of nerd adoration for a while, I wonder how a more statistically-minded organization might view him. Even under the often curious player development of the past few years, Pizzano has never really logged time in center and has been predominantly a left fielder for the duration of his career. His numbers would be exciting, from a CF candidate who was a couple of years younger, but as a left fielder who survives on skills over tools, it’s a much tougher sell. Pizzano has two seasons of an OBP of around or above .400 and two in the .350 range. He’s slugged over .500 once as a new draftee and has been otherwise in the .425-.475 neighborhood, to which his high averages have contributed. He’s topped double-digits in home runs just once. I want to see what he might be capable of with better coaching, but the same could be said of a lot of dudes (Edgar, save us, again).

In 2015, the Mariners saw fit to devote a not-insignificant amount of playing time to Jesus Sucre, John Hicks, and Steve Baron while demoting Mike Zunino to triple-A, eventually. What all four of these players had in common was a competence at handling a staff and good defensive reputation. Marlette doesn’t have that defensive reputation. He’s passed a ball every five defensive games and runs a caught stealing percentage in the neighborhood of a third. To boot, he got caught up in the mess everyone else did and logged his first full season of batting under .280 or slugging under .420. The K/BB didn’t go sideways, but the skills weren’t there otherwise. Assuming the Mike Zunino reclamation project does… something… the question becomes whether you prefer to maintain some level of offensive continuity or defensive continuity. Marlette might be able to get you to the marks of the former. The latter might be his long-term downfall. Given his current profile, I doubt that any team would want to hold onto him for a full season.

Blash has been a perennial bridesmaid on this list, often performing, but not without flaws and leaving our understanding of his being shunned overly reliant on personal defects. Surely, the previous administration didn’t give a good goddamn about strikeouts, so it was left to our surmise that he was being excluded either due to age or the fact that he partook in a drug that happened to be legal in the state of his primary residence. The Zduriencik FO left it’s own heap of unknowns to work through in order to arrive at our “NO” and DiPoto probably will go through similarly inscrutable processes. Blash has usable power and is part of a very thin high-minors outfield depth that we have internally, but the new group has stated a distaste for strikeouts and if you really want a viable CF candidate, then Leon Landry (whom I won’t be writing about) is probably a better bet.

I know there seems to be some fringe circle of Landazuri supporters over the years which I am party to, but it hasn’t gone so well for us so far. I was capable of rationalizing his 2014 performance on the grounds that he had suffered a core muscular injury and likely had his mechanics thrown off whereas prior to that he was gangbusters. This time around, I don’t have so clean a response. About as much as I can say is that he was good in April and bad thereafter despite logging roughly a full-season’s worth of regular starts. Most people would be willing to write him off again on this basis, but then he’s also been pitching in the Mexican Pacific League and has looked like his dominant self, running a 30/2 K/BB over the first four starts, spanning 22.0 innings. Plainly, he needs coaching or something to help him get a greater degree of consistency, but the high minors right now are rather thin on pitching for us and it doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to stash him in the hopes that he could either get you spot starts or fully figure it out in three option years.

As a devoted Choi fanboy, the spring was hard on me because it began with rumors that Choi was taking up switch-hitting after years as a left-only bat and ended with that weird collision that blew up most of his season. The outlook initially appeared to be doom-and-gloom insofar as it was going to be his last year of options and there were assorted other potential first basemen in the high minors that might pass him on the depth chart, such as D.J. Peterson, Jordy Lara, Jesus Montero, maybe even Kivlehan. But as the season played out, none of those guys took the decisive step forward and the closest one, Montero, remains an underperformer in limited major league time. Choi is presently playing winter ball in the Dominican and walking and hitting for some power as he’s inclined to do. Given that he missed all but the last month and that his offensive profile is unconventional, you’d probably be okay operating under the assumption that he wouldn’t be an attractive Rule 5 selection and thus avoid adding him and potentially burning that last option year until you absolutely had to. On the other hand, he’s on the FA market and who knows what he’s looking for or what teams are likely to value him?

Moran was selected already a couple of years ago by the Angels, but late in spring training he came down with elbow inflammation and had Tommy John surgery mid-April. The language around the Rule 5 article dictates that a player has to remain on the active roster for x days in order to be retained, and Moran being unable to pitch or do baseball, he was returned to the Mariners following the season’s end. One of the things that has made him intriguing in the past was that he, despite being thought of as a LOOGY, was pretty proficient at getting both kinds of batters out. In 2015′s limited sample, he didn’t do great exactly, but the components looked pretty similar from one side of the plate to the other, with a bit of an uptick in Ks against LHB and increased hits for RHB. Then again, you’re looking at about thirty innings and he didn’t display great command in his immediate return. Recency bias would lead me to think that after throwing Luetge and Rollins at the problem, protecting Moran wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility, and DiPoto saw enough in him to warrant the acquisition back when he was with the Angels. Then again, we have a Riefenhauser and a Rasmussen now.

Unsworth began his season in double-A where he had three total starts spanning 11.0 innings with the same number of earned runs, a 7/3 K/BB, and thirteen hits allowed. Shifting back to the Cal League, he stayed in the Blaze’s bullpen for all of May before being granted a spot in the rotation. By mid-July, he was back in double-A again, so, if we’re looking primarily at how he closed out his season, the final ten starts in double-A had him recording a 3.42 ERA in 55.1 innings, a .269 avg against, 44/10 K/BB, which isn’t bad, but still is off his norms for K-output. I highlight this because Sharkie’s stuff is almost exactly average and he’s gotten by with a good groundball rate and by avoiding walks. You can think he might survive as an innings-eater, but his profile reads more like a #5 starter whereas you can squint at Lando and maybe see a #3 in good years.

Every so often, these surveys of the system turn up players that I honestly don’t know all that much about. Morales was signed at the tail end of 2009 and through his third pro season had pitched a grand total of 26.1 innings. He went on to pitch more than double that in his fourth and final VSL year, but what he was doing in the interim that kept him off the mound is a mystery. Nothing in the media guide mentions injury, although the commitment to using him in relief as of this year might suggest something is going on. Morales evidently has strikeout stuff and has posted good ratios throughout, but the lack of information on him doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence.

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]]>36982015 Everett Aquasox Previewhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/06/18/2015-everett-aquasox-preview/
Thu, 18 Jun 2015 15:00:00 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=21595The past several years, I’ve had to deal with a minor conundrum. On one hand, I liked having an extra minor league affiliate in Pulaski because yay baseball but it also provided one more thing to stare at, one more team that I probably wouldn’t preview, and an environment and park factors that I didn’t quite know what to do with. Booo baseball. Then in the offseason, the Yankees snapped up Pulaski and we went back to having effectively two short-season summer affiliates plus two abroad (now both in the Dominican because Venezuela is not safe right now).

The boon of this for fans in this region is that, since there are fewer places for top prospects to go, the Everett team looks like it could be pretty darned talented this year. This will likely place the team in contrast to last year’s last-place squad. Scout/manager Rob Mummau will also be taking over again as manager, so anyone who was anticipating seeing Dave Valle outside of the broadcast booth is not in luck this year.

The areas of intrigue for me are primarily the outfield, which has something interesting at every position, and the rotation which is unusually structured and has at least three pitchers I’m already interested in. The backstops, eh, they’ll probably handle the pitching staff, and the infield’s hitting will likely be limited to the corners if it gets it there. The bullpen, which contained thirteen men on first roster release, is a place one could get lost in and I’m not quite sure what to think of it outside of a few members. Overall, this team should have a good amount of power and enough going on in the rotation to keep them in games. Looks like a competitive squad to me. And with the accelerated signing process and the college-heavy draft, I would expect that this is mostly the team we have, barring some contributors who are filling in elsewhere at the moment. Let’s get to it.

For a few years now, the Mariners have tried various methods to try to reduce the number of innings spent by college pitchers coming into their first pro season. For a while, the rotations were somewhat nebulous, as the Aquasox opted to use career college relievers or swingmen to start while expected members of the rotation worked long relief and went back to starting the next season. That lasted a few years, then went back to a somewhat normal standard, and now the Aquasox appear to be trying out a six-man rotation that is mostly left-handed.

Gohara is the headliner despite a poor season last year. If you’ve effectively blocked it out of your memory at this point, he pitched 37.1 innings over eleven starts, had a 37/24 K/BB, and gave up six dingers and more than a hit per inning. Bad. He lacked his command and release point most of the season. By contrast, the late Victor Sanchez was in Everett his first season, Clinton next, and finally Jackson, putting up more or less respectable numbers at each stage. Gohara’s stuff was just fine, and sitting in the low-90s and touching 96 or so, no one should be worrying about that aspect of his profile, he just happened to be showing his age and occasionally flashing his potential. He’s good. Still the best pitcher we have in the low minors. Eager to see some results out of him.

Next in level of relative excitement would probably be Moore. Now, Moore didn’t really look like much to me at first blush because all of the scouting reports seemed to indicate somewhat pedestrian stuff and elite level command, which sounds like a back-end starter if all goes right. On that subject, I’m not terribly worried about him as he seems to be a hard-working, competitive type who can make the most of his abilities. However, there started to be rumblings coming out of the postdraft that the scouting reports that had him high-80s and slightly above were off-base and perhaps he could be hitting 92-3 with more regularity now. Having that kind of bump in velocity has a way of making everything else look better and compensate for certain deficiencies in the curve and change-up, which aren’t supposed to be anything too special.

After Moore, probably Ratliff? Ratliff is a younger JuCo guy who was 19 last season and got all of six appearances in between Pulaski and Peoria before being shut down with an elbow strain that lasted most of the summer. Ratliff is projectable (6’3″, 185 lbs) and posted some pretty good numbers in his JC, but beyond that he’s sort of an unknown and not a guy that I can even provide you much in the way of a scouting report beyond being in the upper-80s and hitting the low-90s sometimes, which is good for a left-hander. He needs work on his secondary offerings, but the physical ability appears to be there. The “unknown” aspect, and “What’s he going to do?” may contribute to some less-than-warranted intrigue on my part.

The rest provides less enthusiasm on the grounds of lower draft standing or general confusion as to what the offerings might be. Byrd was drafted just after Ratliff, though he was a senior at the time of selection and is probably around for his veteran presence. The curveball gets compliments and the fastball is good enough, so it’s really a matter of him throwing strikes. He didn’t do that especially well in Pulaski as he had a 25/15 K/BB in 37.2 innings and gave up a fair number of runs despite being a good groundballer.

Santiago is the foreign import coming to us by way of the Dominican. For those reasons, it’s difficult to sort out what he may or may not be, except to point out that he’s 21 now, signed before the 2013 season, and is something of a late bloomer. After debuting on the DSL team, he got a late-season promotion to Peoria last year where he had nine appearances and ran a 45/20 K/BB through 45.0 innings and, unusually for the level, had a .190 average against. My guess is that some amount of stuff is likely there and just developed late, and you can still wind up with interesting returns from those types.

Last is Misiewicz, whose name I have Ctrl + C’ed so that I don’t have to deal with it. Misiewicz played for the Michigan State Spartans and is a native to the state, so cold weather kid all through. He attracted the notice of some HS scouts back when he was eligible, but otherwise wasn’t scouted heavily. Looking at his line from the last season. 3.80 ERA, 58/31 K/BB in 68.2 innings. He was a skosh better all around the year prior, but was relieving most of the time whereas this year he was a swingman. In any case, whatever the stuff, I would expect that he’s something of a project at the moment and the wild pitches, hit batters, and poor command would seem to corroborate with that. Analysis! (mimes sinking a two-pointer)

Something about roster sizes always catches me off guard. Supposedly, I’m looking at a thirteen-man bullpen here after a six-man rotation. I imagine not all of these arms are going to be healthy, but there’s a point at which my mind looks at the accumulation of all these names and just goes “NO.”

If you’re looking for the next Carson Smith or Dom Leone, Wilcox is probably your dude. He doesn’t have Smith’s slider or Leone’s early control and repertoire, but he does have a fastball that’s hit 98 in brief stints and that’s enough to get you noticed. He’s got a good change and a good breaking ball, but neither are great and the breaking ball lacks definition at times. What I could see happening with him is he’s kept in the bullpen this year to toy around with things and then starts for a while next year for the sake of getting innings. Depending on how they decide to utilize him, he seems like a fast-track type and could easily be the first member of this class to hit the majors.

Gillies joins Wilcox and Moore as the top ten pitcher picks from this year that have made this roster, though Gillies was a bargain signing and not much may be expected of him. He was a swingman for the ASU Sun Devils for four years and could pitch in various roles as need dictates. Probably the most versatile arm among the bullpenners.

Silva, who was picked just after Gillies, is a stocky southpaw and can be used in high-leverage situations or to sop up a few innings, but he’s basically considered a bullpen arm. The velocity is good, falling at the higher end of the low-90s spectrum and he’s got a good slider. I suppose the floor for him as a major leaguer would be something akin to a LOOGY but before that happens, he’s really going to need to fix his control numbers because his BB/9 was at its lowest as a sophomore at 5.32.

You know, heck, let’s just blaze through these southpaws. Clancy is out of St. John’s where I feel like we’ve drafted guys before. He was a reliever throughout there and had some early command issues which seem to have resolved themselves this year as both his walks and hits per inning came down considerably.

Hermann is one of three pitchers on this staff with two first names. Remember that Cliff Lee commercial with Figgins? Good times. Hermann was actually a 36th round pick last year and bounced between various levels, eventually getting two spot starts in High Desert where he was an arm that absorbed some innings. The command numbers look positive outside of those two starts where the Mavericks couldn’t get away with not having a starting pitcher, but given he was a late pick out of a small school, it’s hard to know what’s there.

James is the other southpaw with two first names and continues an organizational effort to pursue as many Logans as possible. He’s an undersized (read as: sub-6 foot) guy who comes out of the program at Stanford which means that the Mariners had peripherally kept tabs on him as they drafted Austin Wilson a couple years back and Drew Jackson this year. They likely see something worthwhile despite the fact that his K/BBs have been somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4 for his career and the added Ks this season came with a lot more walks. He made some spot starts for the Cardinal, but doesn’t seem like the most efficient pitcher out there.

Pistorese was at Wazzu for four years and was part of a battery we drafted out of there. He’s originally of Kalispell, which isn’t Washington but still a pretty cool place. Pistorese was pretty much a career starter for the Cougs and posted low walk rates, but somewhat pedestrian strikeout numbers, which never exceeded six per nine. On the other hand, he was tested within the Pac-12 and may get an uptick in stuff from working relief for a while and is one of probably a dozen guys who you could probably start one part of a doubleheader should it come to it.

People are probably looking at the Cano name and thinking, well, I don’t know. Divish tweeted over spring training that Joselito is Robinson’s younger brother and there’s something to that, in that Robinson’s father is also Joselito and one thinks, why not? The only thing that bugs me out about it is that this Cano, while signed as a Dominican free agent, was born in Puerto Rico, and the timing doesn’t seem to sync up with it being a winter league occurrence. Anyway, he was released by the Rays last year and then signed by us following three years in the Rays’ summer league. He’s had some good Ks but the command comes and goes.

Right-handers now? Groan. Arias gets a gold star for having an “r” in his name unlike his counterpart in Clinton . He was another late-bloom, late-sign who had awful command in the DSL and not-so-bad-command-but-still-sub-2.0-K/BB in Peoria last year. He also hit eleven batters in 50.1 innings, and with eleven appearances, why that’s a batter per start. And he balked six times somehow? Perhaps he was late to pitching and played futbol before that or some such.

Troy Scott was a California JuCo guy drafted in the 18th round two years ago and fits that billing of two first names. He’s not made much of an impact thus far, having only made it briefly to full-season ball this year when he gave up a lot of hits and an unpleasant number of walks and four wild pitches and two hit batters in just 21.1 innings. I would presume that he has some amount of stuff because he’s a bigger guy and guys who have run lines like his haven’t always been long for the minors. Specifically, the command ratios can be okay at times, but gosh does he ever give up hits.

Thonvold went to high school and college in Minnesota and relieved four years for the Golden Gophers with some subpar command numbers. In HS, his FP topped around 86, but in college one presumes he got a bit better. Perfect Game had him as one of their top 1000 nationally when he was a prep, but it doesn’t really look like, from his college career, that he developed the way people thought he might. On a more positive note, he was a two-way guy in HS and could have more room for development now and he pitched in both the Northwoods and Cape Cod Leagues over the previous two summers, which not just anyone does and his command in those two stops was better.

Tornberg pitched for Texas-Arlington and is a Texas guy through and through. He spent his first two years at a JuCo, so he wasn’t especially on anyone’s radar until these last two seasons. He didn’t get drafted as a junior because he had a 12/11 K/BB in 12.1 IP. He did get drafted as a senior with a 20/9 K/BB and twenty-eight hits allowed in 22.2 innings. In spite of that, he did save eight games, so he’s got that going for him.

Outside of having a name, Arthur Frank Warren, that seems like it might’ve been given to someone who was born sixty years prior, what can be said about him? Warren started out at the University of Cincinnati and transferred to Ashland (go Eagles) for his last two seasons. He redshirted last year and was an IF/P in high school when he hit 84 on the gun. Probably throws a little harder now. Had command issues both this year and in 2013.

Catchers: P.J. Jones, Arturo Nieto, Johan Quevedo

That’s right, there are so many pitchers on this roster that they need to carry three catchers! Shut up, it makes sense. Jones was Pistorese’s batterymate at Wazzu and got on base at a decent clip, improving his eye numbers each season and having a nearly .400 OBP this year to go with his .258 average. He has some doubles power but he’s not a guy who’s going to help much in the slugging department. It’s hard to speak too much about his batting numbers so I would expect that he’s pretty competent at handling a pitching staff and defense or else he wouldn’t be drafted.

Usually one of Nieto or Quevado would fill a major roster need by having a Spanish-speaking catcher on staff, but from the looks of it the Aquasox have only four Latin American pitchers and the need there would seem diminished. Nieto got three years in the summer leagues and stood out there for his ability to get on base. That may seem a blip given the general proficiency of pitchers down there, but he continued it in the AZL last season. His CS rates for his career have averaged out to 51% , but he was passing a few balls while in the summer leagues. He can also spot at first if needed.

Quevedo spent his first three years in the VSL before coming stateside last year. He doesn’t have the defensive profile of Nieto, as he passes fewer balls and only catches guys at a 38% rate for his career, but then he looks as if he was getting them nearly half the time last season in the AZL. He’s more of a slugger than the rest of the guys behind the plate, more of a batter, and could conceivably spot at first sometimes although I don’t know how great that need might be.

Homestretch! Okay, so, I don’t know, not the highest billing on the roster, but I guess Ryan Uhl is interesting to me as a guy who in D-II ball slugged over 1.000. Because NCAA regular numbers aren’t dumb enough to look at, you gotta head over to D-II ball to see how wacky things can really get. Uhl was a finalist for D-II’s Tino Martinez Award but didn’t get it. He can pitch a little too, but odds are he won’t be needed to do that and they’ll be happy with him hitting balls really far and getting the relay on double plays. He’s out of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is not the only Pennsylvania university suffering from an identity crisis.

Calderon was a bonus baby back in the day and everyone’s expected big things of him. He had a .343/.448/.590 line in the VSL as a 19-year-old but that hasn’t translated to the states, no sir. Last year for Pulaski in 222 plate appearances, he hit .184/.298/.265, which I suppose is good from the on-base standpoint but he struck out in a third of his at-bats and… well, I guess there’s always his 11-for-12 stolen base numbers? He can play infield or outfield corners and might stand to get some time out there with not many nominal outfielders on the roster.

Jackson is a Stanford guy, as mentioned, and is supposed to be supremely athletic but was used more as a defensive replacement his first two years at Stanford. His batting line as a junior was a respectable .320/.396/.388 when previously his OPS had never exceeded .570 in college, but Stanford is sort of a mystery even when you’re playing full-time on account of the Stanford Swing. He’s not a waterbug out there at short but he has supposedly one hell of an arm and could pitch if it came to it. We have a good track record with our top ten shortstops though.

Another candidate for short would be Fernandez, who has played all around the infield through his career and has even played a good amount of center and right field in the summer leagues. One more potential outfielder in the mix. Like Quevedo, he was a three-year VSL guy, and like Nieto, he’s actually pretty good at getting on base and showed off that stuff even stateside last year when he drew five more walks than Ks. This is good because he doesn’t have a lot of power and anything that can be added to the profile is a boon.

Cowan is an infielder who was born in Covington, went to high school in Kent, and has pitched four appearances in the minor leagues because the situation somehow necessitated it. So that’s cool. He was an interesting get for a 37th rounder, and yet we haven’t seen a great deal from him yet. He’s in a similar camp to Fernandez in that he has good walks but not a lot of stolen bases or power which makes you think that things may rely more heavily on his getting on-base. He had eight sac hits last year for the ‘Sox and two more in brief appearances for Jackson so one can presume he plays the game the right way by some standards.

Hale is an LSU guy and was helping them out in the collegiate postseason this year, so he’s a future, not current addition. He transferred to the Tigers from Manatee-Sarasota in Florida and has batted pretty decently over the course of his career, as his line through college was .337/.375/.458 and that’s not inflated too much by the JuCo time. My guess is that his overall profile would be something like a bat-first utility infielder, except that I don’t know where he’ll get the majority of his starts now as a pro considering. Second base could be a spot for him in this lineup, but then they might want that for Fernandez.

So, plainly, this is where you’re going to find the vast majority of the hitting talent. I joked about Alex Jackson basically being The Second Coming except his reception in the Midwest League was more akin to the reception of The Stone Roses’ album, Second Coming which everyone seems to hate on because it wasn’t the self-titled, but I actually rather like it in parts, I just can’t stand “Ten Storey Love Song.” Yes, I’m talking about a Madchester band as a lead-in to talking about the system’s top prospect basically as a troll effort. Alex Jackson is still pretty good and you don’t really have to worry about his earlier efforts in the MWL because 1) he was a teenager in the MWL and 2) he was playing through a left shoulder injury, which you really shouldn’t be doing as a baseball player because you’re being paid to perform and you can’t perform with a bad shoulder. He’s young. He’ll be fine. Go see him. Hopefully he’ll do some exciting things and avoid hurting himself while playing baseball.

Bishop is probably the second-best hitter on the roster on ceiling and the second offensive prospect to keep your eye on. He’s bumped Cousino as the top defensive OF in the organization and is probably going to appear on some top ten prospect lists by the end of the season, I would expect. In order for him to be anointed as the CF of the future, he’ll need to hit the ball more consistently and with more authority, and perhaps, find a means of getting on base without getting plunked. He’s all right, he just doesn’t have much in the way of power and goes through hot and cold stretches.

When he’s not in center, Liberato’s a candidate. He was one of the first prospects signed under our new international scouting leadership and is regarded as a batter with a good understanding of the strikezone but not much power at present. Instinctual defender, doesn’t really have great speed but a good arm. At worst, I guess I would say he’s probably a tweener in that his speed may not be enough for center and his power might not be sufficient for right. He also kind of bombed in the AZL last year and spent the spring bouncing from stop to stop as an emergency replacement guy.

Simpson’s position and ceiling are less ambiguous. Basically, he’s supposed to hit the tar out of the ball and do it at a corner. He was a catcher in HS and has a plus throwing arm and power, but he never really got it going over his hundred-odd games last season, hitting for more power in Everett (nine dingers!) but not really having much in the way of an average and striking out in a quarter of his at-bats. It’s a bit of a distant cry from the more positive .244/.33/.489 line he had in Arizona, but the ball carries there and it’s not the best conditions under which to judge a hitter. Simpson is raw, probably more raw than expected, and thus far has looked like a poorer man’s Tank O’Neill. He still has the kind of raw power that would make a team disinclined to give up on him too soon.

Logan Taylor, in addition to being the second Logan and yet another guy with two first names, is also the name of a pitcher in the Mets org. This Logan Taylor was an Aggie, which you may remember from our fight over the 12th man moniker, and this year hit .333/.391/.526 for the squad while playing most of his time in left field. While the power has finally come around for him, defensively, it’s hard to know where he could end up. Doesn’t really have the wheels for middle infield, doesn’t have a great arm but it’s good enough. Third base and left field seem like slots but they’re going to have to make sure he’s comfortable and can keep the bat going.

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]]>3591So You Still Want Me to Write About the 2015 Drafthttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/06/08/so-you-still-want-me-to-write-about-the-2015-draft/
Mon, 08 Jun 2015 07:01:08 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=21404As friends of mine are more into the sport and I can be dragged into matters out of a desire to be conversational, I recently found myself paying some amount of attention to the NFL Draft. You can imagine my bewilderment at the whole affair. “So there is some consensus about where players will fall outside of the first round? And these players can be expected to fill major roles immediately? And you can still find major contributors in the NDFA pool? And various pundits have video clips available and are capable of giving practical commentary on each selection as it’s made all through the draft? What the crap is this?”

I understand some of the nuances that differentiate the sports. Baseball is more skill-based, football has an advantage of media given that all their players go through the NCAA system, etc, and yet, the mind still has some difficulty catching up. The phenomena of drafting this type of position in this round because it can be expected to yield this value is wholly foreign to me, even as I can justify pursuing certain molds of players earlier or later based off of what they might provide.

The Mariners gave up their first round pick because of the Nelson Cruz signing. Consequently, they won’t have their first selection until #60. If this were that other sport, I could speculate on what players might be available at #60, set that against organizational needs, and create a general program for what I expect out of the draft. If I tried that here, I would be hilariously wrong. The time investment required to mock an entire draft is unfathomable to me.

Furthermore, in baseball, there’s rationale for making a big affair of the first round. You can get your number one prospect that way! The Mariner’s last six first overall selections have been considered for #1 prospect internally at various points! Waiting until #60, you don’t have that same boon. That’s not to say that there haven’t been productive players taken by the organization after that. Edwin Diaz was selected 98th overall and is likely the farm’s best starting pitcher right now. Brad Miller wasn’t picked up until #62. Kyle Seager had to wait until #82 and there are probably some teams rather upset with themselves for squandering their chances at him.

As far as who the selection will be, baseball is generally not that predictable and I’ve seen return on heavy investment in the Mariners selecting a guy still on the board exactly once (that would be James Paxton). In lieu of going down the draft boards and looking at prospects in that window around #60, I’ll instead talk about what we’ve seen broadly from the Mariners draft board and what that might translate to.

If the Maddox era and a bit after that registers in my mind for drafting toolsy prospects often from cold-weather, Midwest regions, then the drafts under McNamara immediately are characterized by drafting guys out of ACC and SEC schools. Which is not to say that it’s all ACC and SEC, as Carter Capps was a D-II guy, but the east coast, both small and large schools, is where we’ve been most comfortable returning to time and again.

For this draft, one possible name could be Alex Robinson, a southpaw who attends Maryland. He’s got great velocity and bad command, and we haven’t shied away from those types at all. More variable on the list is Virginia’s Joe McCarthy, who is a polished hitter and a potential CF who, worst-case scenario, is a slap-hitting LF. His stock has fluctuated a bit due to offseason back surgery and weak performances following it. If he gets picked, I am going to make so many political references you will hate it. Another candidate, possibly for the second pick, is North Carolina’s Skye Bolt, who has a great name, but still is no Sequoyah Trueblood Stonecipher. Bolt’s a lock for CF and is a switch-hitter with great all-around tools, but his bat skills are not great despite flashing plus power. It’s a weak year on the whole for that region, so we may see the Mariners’ attentions drift elsewhere, in which case…

The Mariners appear to have been following around the Canadian travel squads these past few years because they were willing to give Morgan well over his slot bonus last season in order to lure him away from the college ranks. Thus far, the returns haven’t been extraordinary as each of these hitters have had issues of polish. O’Neill is at least recovering recently after a very silly first month in which he had an ISO of .195 and ran a 31/1 K/BB.

Josh Naylor out of Ontario is a decent, speculative pick. He’s got elite left-handed power and some contact issues and is also limited to first base despite a good arm. A pick less likely to be available would be Demi Orimoloye, who is a five-tool OF who projects to either center or right field but also doesn’t always make consistent contact. If the team likes the pitching out of Canada this year and wants something different, there’s Mike Soroka, who is a low-90s RH with a great curveball. He could be a difficult sign seeing as how he’s lined up to go to Cal and could really see his stock improve three years down the line, whereas at present it could be harder to justify burning a second round pick on him.

You can probably see where the last couple of drafts have thrown me for a loop in that we haven’t picked shortstops with our second picks. Of course, just because they’re selected there doesn’t mean they’ll stay there. Franklin and Miller have both taken on super-utility roles, Littlewood became a catcher, and DeCarlo is basically the Jack Cust profile playing a plus third base.

If we’re going into the college ranks, a couple of possibilities would be Blake Trahan of Lousiana-Lafayette and Mikey White of Alabama. Trahan has good but not great speed, plus bat control, limited power, and a bit of trouble with throwing accuracy (sound familiar?). White is a high-motor guy who plays better than his average tools would lead one to think. As the Mariners drafted DeCarlo out of Pennsylvania HS, you might guess they could be into Travis Blankenhorn, who was two-sport guy (basketball) and is more of a bat-first type who could end up at third, based on his defensive strengths. If he’s available, I’d also consider Florida SS Richie Martin since he was a pick by the ‘Ners out of high school. He’s a bit streaky for a OBP guy with good defensive tools, but he’s also young for the college class.

Bear in mind that this is all broadly speculative based on location and types of players. Among the other features we’ve seen that are peculiar to Mariners drafts, we’ve seen through the years that the Mariners tend to give an edge to players in the same region as their #1 pick, which is why I speculated that the Mariners were actually targeting Carlos Correa in 2012, given that they went heavy on Puerto Rican prospects with Edwin Diaz and Kristian Brito later. The most prominent example of this was probably back in 2009 when we picked Ackley, Seager, and Brian Moran out of NC and then Jimmy Gillheeney out of NC State, followed by the 2011 draft when we got Danny Hultzen, John Hicks, and Steve Proscia all out of Virginia with Chris Taylor getting the nod the following year as soon as he was eligible. There are trends for the draft as it unfolds, but for the top guy, the geographic or positional preference is less important in and of itself. As for simple draft mechanics, of course the team is also entirely likely to go to California, or Texas, or Florida for the selection because those are baseball hotbeds you don’t just ignore. I just can’t provide any specific insights there because those are places that every team is obligated to scout.

It’s a different sort of beast just by virtue of waiting around for #60. The last time we waited so long, it was for a comp pick at #43 which ended up being Taijuan Walker in a draft where we went all in on high-upside pitching. At the time, Walker had just started throwing off the mound after a career as a shortstop and basketball player. There could easily be a push to select a higher-upside, boom-or-bust type in a draft where we otherwise have fewer early picks to play with. The #50-70 range of the boards I’ve stared at are littered with more HS pitchers than would be practical to list. As it’s a draft where the consensus is that there aren’t a lot of guys that combine high-upside with polish, it’s hard to know just where they all might go. The Mariners could easily dip into those ranks for both of their first-day selections, or they could do something crazy like pick up Georgia prep Alonzo Jones, who has the draft’s best speed and is a switch-hitting middle-infield/center field candidate who had his senior season lost to hamate surgery.

Now that I’ve dispensed with the challenges of speculation, I can provide you with some of the more basic information pertaining to the draft.

When is this draft happening?

Round one through Comp B starts at 4 pm PT on Monday, June 8th. Rounds 3-10 will begin Tuesday, June 9th at 10 am PT. The draft will then conclude on Wednesday, June 10th, with the final thirty rounds beginning at 9 am PT.

When are the Mariners picking?

#60, #72 (Comp B selection awarded by lottery), #94, and then #125 and in intervals of 30 thereafter.

Wait, what happened to our first-round pick?

The new CBA rules, we forfeited our first-round pick and the Orioles got a pick added to the end of the first round. They did not get our pick, our pick just disappeared, as is the case now with teams that would have drafted lower in the first round.

What are the strengths of this draft?

From the looks of it, college shortstops, college pitching, high school outfielders, some high school pitching.

Are we missing out by not having a first-round pick?

Probably not. No one seems to be super enthused about this class. We’re missing out on drafting Mike Cameron’s kid though.

What are the Mariners’ needs going into this draft?

Okay, you don’t draft for need because–

Fine, what is the general state of the system?

Depends on what part of it you’re looking at. The young pitching under team control at the major league level is well-known. In the high minors, you have a maybe shortstop in Marte, a backup catcher in Hicks, and various corner infield candidates. The low minors are more characterized by their corner ourfielders and have some interesting pitching, but not a whole lot. The system is still lacking in viable CF candidates and depth up the middle could probably stand to be improved a bit.

Should I really expect the Mariners to draft anyone you’ve listed above?

Based on my track record with guessing Mariners-type picks, probably not. Each organization is going to weight things differently. I could use a draft board from this or that source as a reference point and then see the team end up with a completely different set of priorities. Don’t get too attached to any of the names I’ve listed. Just learn what the actual selections are about when they come.

What would you like to see the Mariners do with this draft?

Draft a future Mariner.

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]]>35792015 Tacoma Rainiers Previewhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/04/09/2015-tacoma-rainiers-preview/
Thu, 09 Apr 2015 15:00:52 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20940An evening full of typing and being sort of bummed out by a failed Mariners rally later, and I’m here with a Tacoma Rainiers preview. I feel like at this level, there’s a tendency to get more philosophical because we’re not so much trying to determine what could happen for guys as evaluating what has happened. Triple-A can be a land of players that have been around a while, for whom the results have already spoken, but I found myself unusually eager to type my way through it this time even if it’s been a slog in years past.

Three-fifths of the rotation is new to us and features some former top prospects within their respective systems and whatever Elias is outside of a ten-game winner for the ‘Ners last season. The bullpen has various names of recent and more distant familiarity and a guy who, despite being added to the 40-man, still seems to be ignored in a lot of outlets. Catching will be split between two guys with solid all-around profiles. The infield has Montero, Marte, and a supporting cast that can make a case for fringe MLB roles (I pray we give Bonilla the Jaime Bubela treatment when he finally does retire), and then the outfield has a unicorn, a broken unicorn, some role players we’re still trying to figure out, and the bizarre and talented Jabari Blash, who isn’t a unicorn but is probably some other breed of cryptid.

Because Mike Curto is a dude of the highest order, I actually know what the rotation will be looking like. The ace of the rotation is going to be Pries, who has done all right for himself for a 30th-round pick. Among the finer points of his 2014, besides pitching his way onto the radar, he allowed a run or less in almost half of his Tacoma starts, although with a 4.06 overall ERA, you can vaguely see where things might have gone rather poorly for him a few times. Six outings, for example, saw him give up five or more runs. In spite of that, he led the org in innings at 154.0 and was second in Ks at 120, though he’s tended to hover around a 2:1 K:BB ratio the last two years. He’s a fine org pitcher, but I think that something might have to go awry for him to be much more than that.

Elias on the other hand… well, I think that I’d rather see him than Happ sometimes, but you’d think that he might get the chance to see some starts later this year and beyond that. Elias had a spring training showing perhaps more in line with what might have been expected of him last year as he a 8/7 K/BB and twenty-six hits allowed through 14.2 innings. To be fair, the worst of that damage was the last start against the Brew Crew when he gave up six runs on eight hits with a 1/3 K/BB in three innings. If you look at what he did overall last year, he was a bit better in the second half (or properly, last third) as he saw his slugging against drop by more than seventy points, even as his average and OBP rose a bit. I think he has the stuff to stick around in the majors a while, but as we’ve all recognized, much of that depends on his command.

The remaining three are all imports from other organizations. Kickham is in his third org, having originally been drafted by the Giants, but after he was waived by them, he was a Cub for all of three weeks before being traded for Dutch right-hander Lars Huijer. Kickham was a pretty good prospect for San Francisco, having a low-to-mid-90s heater, a slider, a curve, and a change. He opted for more the power than finesse arsenal, which has been appropriate as his command has never been all that good and the walks, higher than most people’s comfort level. He remains technically a rookie, having never really established himself in the big leagues. We’re good enough at handling pitchers so the change of scenery could turn out to be a positive.

Montgomery was formerly a top prospect in all of baseball. The whole thing. The same year we drafted Josh Fields, the Royals were active and between picking up Eric Hosmer and Johnny Giavotella, recently sighted with the Angels, they drafted Montgomery. Back then, he was throwing around 90, touching 94, and had a curve and change that were impressive as secondary offerings. Zip a few years ahead and he’s the Royals’ best prospect, having added a couple miles to his fastball and improved his change, though the command and curveball remained works in progress. In the winter of ’12, he was one of the set of prospects sent to the Rays in the Shields/Davis trade. Montgomery has never really been the same pitcher in the high minors that he was in the low minors. A lot of that is hits, as previously he was in the 6.5 per nine range and has seen his totals three higher with added home runs at the double and triple-A levels. By late March this year, that rendered him worth an Erasmo Ramirez. His velocity has regressed, his curve has never been where it needs to be, and some have lost patience and wanted to try him out in the bullpen. For the Mariners part, they’re still into him as a starter and he’s going to keep at it with the Rainiers. It’s his last option year.

Gaviglio is what we got in exchange for Ty Kelly going to the Cardinals. While the Redbirds put Kelly on the 40-man immediately, the Mariners left Gaviglio unprotected during the Rule 5 draft and no one was interested enough to take him. Throughout his minor league tenure, he’s run GB%s above 50% for every full season, or any reasonably full season, as that includes a 2013 year where he missed a lot of time with a forearm strain. He’s a guy that tops out in the low-90s and throws a slurvey breaking ball that’s been a good offering for him, but Gaviglio has never really gotten a change-up together and left-handers can knock him around at times. It makes me question his possible utility out of the bullpen, but hey, could be worse. He could be a southpaw that’s better at getting right-handers out.

Bullpen! Some of these names are familiar in that they’ve been in Seattle or on the 40-man previously. Forrest Snow isn’t among those characters, but he was reportedly the last cut from the rotation and has been in Tacoma off and on since 2011. Last year was the first year that his BB/9 dropped below 3.0 since that same season, but if some of those stats are folding in from his tenure in Jackson, does it still count? He’s tested positive for a “drug of abuse” a couple of times now and that cut out his first two months of last year. He made up some of that time in the LVBP, where he made five starts and had a 2.05 ERA over 26.1 innings with a 18/4 K/BB. I would have figured he would have ended up in Seattle in some capacity years ago, but it just hasn’t happened for him yet.

Leone would figured to make the trip north sooner than anyone else, although that’s contingent on his progress in triple-A. As a reference point, last year when he kind of made the team, he had a .171 average against and a 10/3 K/BB in ten innings. This year, he only got seven frames of work in, had a .425 average against, and a 5/3 K/BB. Not good? One likes his chances long-term as a groundball-oriented pitcher with a varied arsenal, but he doesn’t yet have enough of a reputation to justify keeping him around after a poor spring. Or maybe the conspiracy theorists want to buy into the same CB legerdemain that keeps someone of Kris Bryant’s talents in the minors for a few weeks. Time is money.

Luetge could also figure to come back eventually. He saw all of nine innings with the team last year and has been the same high-80s fastball, slider guy he’s always been. His second partial season in Tacoma represents a minor improvement over his first, or I’ll say as much because even though he lost some Ks, the walks and home runs likewise dropped. As for the all-important splits, his .725 OPS against left-handers was a slight improvement over his .764 OPS against right-handers, but then left-handers made better contact against him? The gulf between the two was wider back in his 2013 tenure with the Rainiers. I’d question it, but small sample sizes.

Or, you know, Joe Saunders could be a thing. Or Beimel. Saunders signed with the team again out of loyalty to the Mariners and/or Safeco. He was pretty awful with the Rangers and Orioles last season, but even over that span, his wOBA against left-handers was a respectable .281. With the Mariners in 2013, it was an even-better .252. Basically, it seems like all this time he was masquerading as a starter when his true calling was elsewhere, in relief, never seeing another right-handed bat. Perhaps he could yet have his uses, but I shudder when thinking of that 2013 Mariners pitching staff, or at least the non-Felix, non-Kuma portions, and would prefer to not revisit much of what we had there.

Mark Lowe was one of this season’s blasts from the past as he last pitched with the team in 2009 which, incidentally, was the last time he was really any good. His contributions to the Rangers were negligible and limited appearances for the Angels and Indians over the past couple of seasons were awful enough to net him -0.3 WAR for each. In both cases, his command was really bad, and spring training didn’t show too much evidence of that being different with a 12/5 K/BB and a .286 average against in 8.2 innings. So that isn’t where it used to be and neither is the heater, which is now low-90s rather than mid-90s. I like Lowe. I want good things to happen for him. I don’t want him to come back and have me dread his approach from the bullpen.

Guaipe, I could keep liking, sure. In fact, I’m not sure why a lot of people are less enthusiastic about him. He’s got a low-to-mid-90s heater and a slider that’s been good at times and refined mechanics have allowed to hit his spots with better frequency. Just last year, after the sometimes anticipated hiccup of traveling through High Desert, he dropped his BB% to 4.0 and had more than six strikeouts for every walk. Looks good to me? I don’t think he’ll beat out Leone if a spot opens, but he’s around and will be hard to ignore if he does again what he did last year.

I’m down to Bawcom and Germano now. Bawcom was previously a member of the 40-man before getting flushed out late in December. Remember what I said with Landazuri about oblique strains and pitchers? It seems conceivable that Bawcom endured something similar as he missed a month in the middle of the season due to that injury. Except, weirdly, his numbers were worse pre-injury. Look at his Pre-ASB lines and you get a .330 average against and a 14/16 K/BB. After, .233 average against and a 18/9 K/BB. Was he hiding something? Was there something else going on? Whatever. Bawcom has never had extraordinary command and last season represented the worst of it for him. It’s hard to know what specifically led to that.

My familiarity with Germano is more limited, so I went to my media guide for help. As it turns out, Germano broke Mark McGwire’s Little League home run record as a kid. Has it been all downhill from there? But how could I forget about Germano? June 8th 2007, when he was a Padre, and gave up five runs against us over five innings. Or before that, on May 20th, when he allowed just an unearned run over six frames? Where has the time gone? Germano, through his career, has shown us a mid-to-high-80s fastball, a curve, a change, and most rarely a slider. He has 330 innings of major league experience, which is more than Clint Nageotte, Travis Blackley, and Bobby Madritsch combined. Just barely.

Catchers: John Baker, John Hicks

While Baron has defaulted into the reputation of being the system’s best defensive catcher, I sometimes wonder what he’s doing that Hicks isn’t. Before, it perhaps seemed more clear cut, but then last season Hicks passed only two balls over the course of the season. Or, as a reference point, he was involved in more double plays than he was errors or passed balls. That’s really something. The CS% numbers don’t seem too far apart either, particularly if you write off the fact that he was down to 31% in Tacoma in roughly thirty games last year when Baron has likely been able to inflate his numbers against weaker competition. Hicks can hit too, he’s not really a liability out there and has made steady improvements to his plate discipline. He’s only going to get you 20+ walks and a number of home runs you can likely count on a single hand, but I would say that his future as a back-up catcher doesn’t look bad at all.

So, I’ve known about John Baker, baseball person, for a while now as someone who has played in the major leagues. This is atypical in that he’s been a career NL guy and I’m nearly oblivious to what happens in that league, but bear with me now. Since 2012, we’ve had a Venezuelan infielder by the name of Jhombeyker Morales, and all along, I’ve been wondering, is there a connection? It doesn’t seem plausible given that Baker is only thirteen-and-a-half years older than Morales, but here I go answering my own bizarre questions again. Baker hit well his first couple of seasons with the Marlins but has since seen his offense taper off as he’s been increasingly relegated to backup duties. He is @manbearwolf on twitter. I don’t know if he’s related to the John “Home Run” Baker who played for the Philadelphia Athletics and led the league in home runs from 1911-1914 as he hit 42 total longballs in that span. That was before that jerk, Ruth, came along.

While it’s hard to want specific things out of spring training (I often find myself wanting to see prospects during the televised games, not that I often do), it was a bit disheartening to see Montero leave with only 15 at-bats and a .200/.250/.200 line. I mean, you all saw him right? Didn’t look like the same guy we had previously encountered. Looked like a guy who didn’t have to be taught how to run in his early-20s because he had never previously learned how. And as enthusiastic as I am about Peterson’s future and various other things, part of me sticks to the idea of how neat it would be if Montero actually came through on his prior potential. He hit .286/.350/.489 with the Rainiers last year and was not in great shape then. But now…. maybe?…

Prospect-wise, people are probably more interested in Marte. If I come to that particular bandwagon eventually, I will do so grudgingly. I think that the tools are fine on the whole and that’s what I’ve always heard, but the focus is erratic and we saw as much when he lead the team in errors during spring training despite playing in just fifteen games here and there. Shortstop is a demanding position and if he can’t fundamentally handle that, then it’s difficult for me to continue the assertion that the ability is just fine and he’ll come around. What concerns me more is that, with the series of bandboxes that the PCL has turned into, there would seem to be a risk of him adopting a weird approach or having inflated stats that aren’t representative of what his true talent would be in the major leagues. What turns into a headache for me is probably just fine for his prospect status though.

Rivero is a somewhat older guy who debuted last year at the age of 26, having spent some time in the Indians, Phillies, Nationals, and Boston organizations. While he had a silly 1.911 OPS in eight brief plate appearances with the Red Sox, it wasn’t really representative of what he had done even the rest of that year. In his time with their triple-A affiliate, he hit .286/.341/.407, which is okay, certainly better than his prior tours of the league (2012 tour of Syracuse excluded), but not extraordinary. Despite nearly OPSing 1.000 for the Lara Cardenales in the offseason, he was removed from the 40-man and came back on a minor league deal with an ST invite. He can play third, left, and short, but I’m guessing he’s at the hot corner for the Rainiers.

O’Malley also debuted last year as a 26-year-old, which is a weird coincidence. He did it with another team that wears red too, the Angels, but the results weren’t so hot. Still, you can argue that he earned it, as he hit .330/.411/.475 over 89 games with the Salt Lake Bees last year (BEES). As far as his history goes, he was one of the Rays’ aggressive signings out of the PNW and hails from the Tri-Cities area. I remember reading that he’d wanted to sign with a Mariners as a tribute to his father and his own fandom growing up. He should replace Bloomquist if something happens.

Leury Bonilla hit .234/.291/.320 for the Rainiers in 2014. He also pitched a little and walked four without recording an out, with two runs scoring against him. He played everywhere but catcher and center. That’s about the only thing that I particularly care about. Let’s get him to all nine this year. Make it happen. In the same game.

Outside of Jackson, maybe Peterson, Kivlehan has always been one of my favorite prospects in system. Mostly it’s just in how weird his journey has been. Play football for years, jump back into baseball cold, win league’s MVP and Triple Crown for the first time ever, win NWL MVP, get pushed to Clinton, then High Desert, then spend one more month+ there before turning up in Jackson and coming close to a .300/.400/.500 line, do the same in AFL. And I don’t really get it. We’ve pushed him. He saw 72 games in short-season A, 60 in A-Ball, 102 in advanced-A, 104 in double-A. He’s never been a full season anywhere and his performances have always been at a very high level, despite his lack of experience. He just responds well to the challenge. I have no idea what his true ceiling is. He’s one of a kind.

The more nostalgic among you may drift to Guti, and I won’t fault you for it. He was the dream for a while, that guy who figured it out in Safeco when few other hitters previously had, but then we all know the various injury issues that followed and the individual biological processes. Read up on it, if you’re so inclined. As much as we daydream of those earlier performances, particularly as the early returns for Austin Jackson have frustrated, I don’t know that what we’re getting back is going to be at that peak level of old. I don’t have those kinds of expectations. It’s difficult for me to believe that he’ll be able to play on a day-in, day-out basis.

Two guys who saw time with the Mariners last year…. Stefen Romero and James Jones. Romero, I think was brought in somewhat over-aggressively, and it showed, as he had that aggravating .192/.234/.299 line. I had thought previously that he could be in position for a more difficult adjustment as his approach all throughout the minor leagues had been very strong on contact and somewhat light on walks. As exposed as he was at the major league level, he didn’t carry it with him when he was demoted down to Tacoma again and through 36 games, he hit .358/.387/.669. It was just one month, but he was an absolute monster in August, batting .390/.420/.733 in 105 ABs, and then in the big leagues it was erratic playing time again and a whole lot of nothing.

If one doesn’t trust Guti’s health long-term, that leaves Jones as our non-Ruggiano hope in center. What stuck with me about him in his time with the Mariners was how good he was in a short time at stealing bases. This makes an impression on me of course because of my own established expectations. Jones’ first four seasons, he’d get caught about a third of the time he was running and it wasn’t until 2013 that he got it down to one out of every four times. To see him go on that 27-1 run was wholly unexpected. As for the defensive stuff, eh, I mean, I wanted him to play center all along because I figured that was the safest place for his bat, but he doesn’t always have the greatest reads out there and I think it showed. With the five listed outfielders they have on the active roster and Bloomquist and Weeks that could theoretically play out there (thus far, we’ve been averse to using Weeks in that capacity), it’s hard to see a role for the speedy left-handed slap hitter, but the seasons are long and no one really knows what tomorrow brings.

That brings me to Blash who was suspended for a chunk of last year for perhaps toking on something he shouldn’t have. Hard to know which Jabari to prefer under the circumstances, as Blash played in just 82 games but still managed to knock out eighteen dingers, most of them in Tacoma, and was walking and striking out a fair amount. Translating for playing time, the big components look about the same as they did the year prior, maybe the plate discipline being a little worse, but not horribly so even with the time off. Like Pizzano, I’m tempted to write it off as a BABIP issue, because he was at .232 in Tacoma last year and .270 in Jackson whereas his career norms are well above .300. He went undrafted in the Rule 5 again, but I still want some kind of career for him. Baseball needs a Jabari Blash.

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]]>35092015 Jackson Generals Previewhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/04/08/2015-jackson-generals-preview/
Wed, 08 Apr 2015 23:53:44 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20936We have made it to double-A and I have been typing for hours. Literally hours. But I don’t mind it so much because the Jackson Generals have been a good affiliate for us, very active in hyping up their various alums, and this year, look to have a very talented team. Their outfield is the second-most interesting to me, but it’s close, and their infield is likely the best and most balanced. I like a lot of what I conceive to be their rotation as well, though I would clarify that there are a lot of pitchers on the DL for them right now and on pure prospect watching, Bakersfield is easily better. Jackson just gives us an opportunity to see who we might add to future depth discussions. As for the roster’s liabilities, the bullpen is nothing special and the catchers are defensively-oriented, but otherwise this looks like a really solid group that could do some playoff damage down the line, provided the team stays intact. No promises.

Diversions? Some sour grapes of an international flavor, our last remaining South African player and references to the United Nations, my most frequently used Aqua Teen Hunger Force quote, left-handers who can’t get left-handers out, the elixir of life (in passing), big bats with position questions, utility player heartthrobs, BABIP vagaries, player reevaluations, and a section in which I copy and paste a player’s injury history. I still have no idea who pitches where in the rotation.

Tacoma will be up tomorrow. I don’t know when, but probably before they start play.

I’m running into the speculative rotation issue again, which will be over with by the time I get to Tacoma, as Curto is a real pal. Of course, the bummer in all this, for both me and the members of the roster, is that there are that may guys above who have been mostly starters for their careers and I don’t have the least idea of how they intend to use them.

Thus, I’ll start with a personal favorite and hope it sticks. Landazuri! I’ve always liked Lando and thought that his low-90s fastball, curve, and change combo made him as good a sleeper pick as you were likely to find in the second tier of the system’s pitching prospects, particularly considering that he was good at avoiding the free pass. The hope was that the results would be there and everyone else would come around and see the light, etc. I feel like he’s a guy I’ve nearly talked to death at this point. The abbreviated version is that he was the most dominant pitcher in the league in April and then had an oblique strain. From there, I speculate that a core injury of that nature threw his mechanics off and that’s why the results were awful the rest of the way. It would be great if he got things straightened out.

The name no one is likely to recognize is stout, 5’9″ southpaw Siverio. He pitched for Villa Clara in Cuba from age eighteen through twenty-three, mostly as a starter, with sometimes interesting results. One of the cute things to come out of his defection was that his former manager almost immediately emerged with an “eh, he’s not that great” remark, which sounds like sour grapes, but who knows? Siverio was too old to qualify under the CBA international signing rules, which meant that he didn’t affect our pool any despite getting a contract that would reward him with bonuses if he got to the big leagues. He’s a four-pitch guy, fastball, curve, slider, change. The curve is probably the best of his offerings and he has a way of pitching backwards off of it, as those Cubans do. The fastball was 85-90 in Cuba, which isn’t bad for a left-hander, but now he’s had reports out of Mexico that have said he’s in the low-90s with more regularity now. If true, that’s a plus, but his being a shorter guy will always lead to doubters.

Those are the two that really interest me, but I seem to have seven names above and no guarantee that either of those guys will end up starting. Pike will likely get a second chance at the league after a weak showing in the second-half last year in which he walked more than he struck out. The results he’d had in the first half for High Desert were better, though not extraordinarily so as he still ran a 57/46 K/BB through 61.1 innings there. Basically, since his debut in Peoria, Pike has annually been trending in the wrong direction for both strikeout totals and walk totals. As one of those prototypical southpaws with a heater around 90 to slightly above, a plus change, and an all right curve, that’s not livable. Some say he doesn’t have consistent mechanics. Some say he nibbles too much. Neither are all that flattering. He’s been out of my personal top ten pitchers until I start to see more positive results.

Anderson has his fans in the organization and outside of it and one thinks that he could be on the short-list for bullpen duty. Folks seem to love his breaking ball and he has thrown in the mid-90s at times, making him appealing for that line of work. The thing is, Anderson hasn’t pitched all that much. In his early days in college, he was a two-way guy, spending most of his time at third before people started looking more closely at his arm and figuring that his strength there was more special than what his bat could conceivably provide. Do the Mariners think he’s a starter? Is this vaguely the Tom Wilhelmsen track where he’s just starting to make up for lost time? I don’t know. But thus far, the Ks haven’t been where you might expect given what the stuff is. Something to consider, I guess.

Unsworth is our lone remaining South African player and the United Nations appeal of baseball encourages me to keep pulling for him. Of his California League tour last year, it could be said that he survived. The ERA was weak at 5.90, but FIP and SIERA didn’t have a problem with him at all and he managed to maintain the good command he’s been known for even as his balls in play were sailing a bit further than they were previously. The ability to hit his marks is what make Unsworth special. Without that, no one is going to be telling you excitedly about his stuff. The fastball is below average, the curve and change are just there. Will command be enough to keep him afloat in the high minors? Why is anything anything?

Checking off the remaining names, I have DeCecco and Gillheeney. I saw DeCecco in Everett in 2012. I didn’t think too much of him at the time. He was of a league average age coming up through the various levels and has had results that were around that or worse as he’s come up. He gave up a lot of home runs for the Mavericks last year, twenty-seven in all, or ten more than Unsworth surrendered and three fewer than Jabari Henry hit. He just missed hitting the century mark in Ks despite leading the team with 140 innings pitched. I’m not a fan.

Gillheeney might also be on the shorter list for not starting given that his appearance here, after 105.2 IP with Tacoma last year, is a demotion. Gillheeney has already logged 203.2 innings at the double-A level and, curiously, his strikeouts here have been lower than anywhere else including triple-A by a fair margin. To date, he’s lived off a mid-to-high 80s heater, a plus change, a breaking ball, and just enough command to keep him out of trouble most of the time. It’s hard to imagine that there’s much to be gained by trying him out in relief given that he’s never really had splits to speak of, but then what’s to be gained from keeping him starting at the expense of one of the younger fellows?

I think I’m more comfortable deciding that this is the relief group. There aren’t really headliners in the same way that there were for the Clinton and Bakersfield crews, so I’m just going to go about this in any old order. Hunter has done all right for himself considering he was 31st-round pick. He’s returning to Jackson having spent all of last year with the team. While the walk rates he’s provided have always been pretty good, the Ks have fallen as he’s climbed the ladder and now he’s primarily a contact-based pitcher. Last year, RH hitters were able to get some xbhs against him, but his command was worse against lefties.

Shipers split his season between advanced-A and double A and in double-A his command went sideways. For the Mavericks, he had 3.5 Ks for every walk. For the Generals, he had 0.61 Ks for every walk. I… don’t… know? Let’s examine some splits. LHB slash lines, High Desert, .296/.346/.375, Jackson, .333/.417/.667. RHB slash lines, High Desert, .313/.363/.400, Jackson, .265/.393/.368. So we have two left-handers in the bullpen and neither is better at getting out left-handers than they are at getting out right-handers. Baseball? Baseball.

Let’s move on. Miller was the team’s swingman last season, collecting thirteen starts out of thirty-one total appearances. I considered mentioning him among the starting candidates, but his relief numbers were noticeably better, with his average dropping close to twenty points and his strikeout to walk ratios going from 3:2 to 3:1. The stuff’s good enough so I think that he may worth checking in on now and then from the bullpen.

Wood has been a career reliever so far despite starting a bit in college. Up until his time in High Desert last year, he was known for having a groundball rate of 50%+, which he didn’t quite reach as a Mavericks. Still, 1.5 outs on the ground for every one in the air. He doesn’t walk a lot of guys and his strikeouts have never dipped into the worrisome range.

The new face on staff is Zych, who was traded over by the Cubs near the close of spring training. He’s kind of an oddball in that, if you knew nothing of their respective scouting reports, you might expect Wood had Zych’s repertoire and vice verse. Zych is great at getting groundballs and throws in the mid-90s, but has never been a big strikeout guy, possibly for lack of breaking ball development. He’s been the Southern League for parts of three years and each, his K and KS% have gotten worse. Maybe he’s a few tweaks away from being something better.

In preparing to write about Moises Hernandez, I opened the Wikipedia page on Immortality and then clicked around a bit, stopped. Does it matter what is said about Moises Hernandez? Does it matter what is done? He supposedly retired last offseason and now here he is again. If he wants to coach ever, you can bet that the organization will grant him that opportunity. Scout? Rove? Sure, whatever. Moises Hernandez is a Mariner for Life. You shouldn’t care why.

Catchers: Steve Baron, Carlton Tanabe

He did it! Steve Baron has finally made an opening day roster in double-A! This is an achievement. For those of you who have lost track, Steve Baron was drafted out of a commitment to Duke in 2009, also known as the Mike Trout draft, and has spent a good six years in the minor leagues. Through 166 games at the Class A level, he hit .211/.262/.319. Through 130 games at the Class A+ level, all with High Desert, Baron hit .221.265/.342. This includes last year’s more tolerable .254/.308/.359 which preceded a twenty-one game preview tour of the Southern League in which, hey, he hit better. Most scouts still seem to regard him as the best defender at the position in the system. The more time he spends in the high minors, the more conceivable it becomes that someone gives him a cup of coffee eventually. After all, Rene Rivera played 103 games for the Padres last year and had an OPS+ of 117, somehow.

Tanabe is younger than Baron and was picked down in the 24th-round of the same year. He’s made a minor league career of playing <50 games annually bouncing around between usually two or more levels and filling in as need and emergency might dictate. He’s never been much of a hitter and has racked up a surprising number of passed balls at times, but his caught stealing percentages have always been pretty high. He finds himself in Jackson this year with Mike Dowd on the DL to start the season. If he ends up going into scouting or coaching after finally hanging it up I will be completely not-surprised.

After some lulls, we’re back into interesting territory again. D.J. Peterson had an ISO of almost .300 with High Desert last year and it seemed like a shame when that dropped to .212 in his half-season in Jackson because as prospect watchers, you can often want it all. His plate discipline improved though, which isn’t all that surprising as pitchers at and above double-A tend to be more proficient strike throwers and older. I don’t know what I need to volunteer as information about him anymore. He has a lot of natural power. He doesn’t have the range for third really, which isn’t surprising. The arm is a plus, even if he’ll only get to use it on relays. He could stand to use the opposite field more. Whatever. My guess is he’s in Jackson for a few months and then in Tacoma and then WHO KNOWS.

Lara is a similar though somewhat inferior specimen relative to what we have in Peterson. Skeptics have been all “blah blah it’s only High Desert” but then you look at his stats and he walked more on the road and what’s forty points of slugging difference, really? I’m not even seeing any Lancaster home runs for him in the archives. Post All-Star in the Cal League, he hit .427/.468/.769 in thirty-five games before some obscure mercy rule went into effect and he had to promoted to double-A. He doesn’t have splits. He can hit to the opposite field. The arm is good, but the wheels are bad. If he were capable of playing anywhere outside of first, DH, and the spot start at the hot corner, I think people might be more enthusiastic about him.

So we have two guys without positions beyond first and might have two more. Paolini is one. After Playing 89 games at second his first two seasons, he’s only logged one since and was tried out in left or right field for almost a third of his games last year with the Generals. One thinks the attempt could be warranted in that he’s pretty good at taking walks, doesn’t strike out too much, and has a career ISO just under .200. He’s in that second tier of first base prospects within the system, but he does enough for a team and is good for some damage against left-handed pitching.

Patrick Brady doesn’t have a position because he doesn’t want one. If you’re going by games played in his minor league career, he’s a second baseman. If you’re going by ability, the only thing he hasn’t done yet is catch and I think that’s because no one has yet asked. He played everywhere but first and backstop last year and pitched a couple of frames while he was at it. He’s not a huge offensive threat, but he has some sneaky power and can punish the unsuspecting while not making himself a liability in the batter’s box. He’s basically Leury Bonilla, but from Kentucky.

Middle infield looks to be more settled between Reinheimer and Smith. Both are second or third-tier prospects with their enthusiastic supporters. Reinheimer is one of the better defensive infielders in the system, not so much on arm strength or range as alertness, aptitude, grittiness, intangibles, unquantifiables, and all that stuff that hopefully comes to the fore when one walks pleasantly about a slap hitter who has never topped a .700 OPS over a full season. The Generals team is a little banged up at the moment, but no middle infielders are on that list and so one could regard the promotion of Reinheimer to the squad after just twenty games in advanced-A as a sign of respect.

Tyler Smith is perhaps one of the least of our various Tylers although still good in his own right. He was a step ahead of Reinheimer last year, effectively having a similar split in how he was promoted with that time instead going between High Desert and Jackson. He has the better offensive profile of the two, showing more power and walking a whole bunch to boot. The strikeouts might be a little higher than one would like, but that could be a side effect of being patient. I don’t know how the defensive tools compare, but given that he was drafted as a senior where Reinheimer was a junior, I’ll guess that they’re somewhat inferior.

I’m partial to the Blaze’s outfield, but you can easily look at this and say, yeah, that’s an outfield, for sure. The Young Guerrerito is probably where most people would start off since it’s no longer a mystery as to where the name comes from. Heck, he even had a home run during the Cactus League season and everyone was pointing out similarities between him and his uncle. Fans of the otherwise insane, entirely physical approach that Vlad had should take heart that Gabby is basically the same and is never not swinging for the fences even if he’s getting slightly better at laying off pitches. You know what else is fun? Ten outfield assists. Dude just wants to throw every time you get him the ball. That was good enough for second in the league, tied with a couple of center fielders. Additionally, his walks increased last year, his Ks were static, and his home/road splits were less than a hundred OPS points apart. I was a Wlad Balentien fanboy back in the day, so I’m warming up to him after some initial concerns.

But then, Guerrero wasn’t even the team leader in home runs as that honor went to Jabari Henry, who also led the team in walks. It’s really difficult to know what to think of him, and I certainly had some trouble as I was developing my own prospect lists coming into the season. The results are there, but he was snubbed for promotion and few scouting outlets have wanted to commit to him. I don’t see any major red flags, except that he strikes out a bunch. His home/road splits had a .116 differential in slugging, but that isn’t the worst. A quick glance through game logs only finds him with three home runs at Lancaster. And if you’re faulting him for not quite having the range or arm strength for center field, what corner options are better hitters? Henry is still a bit old for the levels he’s played at, but not alarmingly so, and double-A would be an opportunity for him to establish himself as being a candidate for some kind of major league career.

And then there’s Pizzano, who had previously hit everywhere until the 80+ games he had in Jackson last year. I have to pull for the fellow Columbian, but a .228 average is rough, even if you’re drawing more walks than strikeouts and having 43.5% of your hits go for extras. Well, actually maybe it’s not that bad. If you’re looking at him from advanced metrics, he actually has something of a case for being in Tacoma already, given that he managed his numbers with a .233 batting average on balls in play. That’s something that just doesn’t look right unless he’s easily shifted and I don’t get that impression from what I’ve heard/read about him. If he ends up doing rather well this season, you heard it here, maybe not first, but probably not last.

Ending on Morban is one of those inevitable things that one still feels like pleading with. “But it didn’t have to be this way!” For his career, Morban has been 2-5 years younger than the average age for his level. Despite this, he’s been above an .800 OPS pretty frequently despite being less experienced than his competition. And his being less experienced isn’t just about the fact that he’s younger and grew up playing ball in the Dominican! Morban’s health sucks. Suuuuuuuuuucks. SUUUUUUCKS. Here are some notes from the media guide. 2010: battled a left hamstring strain most of the season. 2011: on disabled list: May 11-20 with a right oblique strain, June 1-15 with a left groin strain and June 27-July 24 with a right groin strain. 2012: on the DL April 22-May 7 with strained left hamstring, June 12-July 6 with strained left hamstring and Aug. 29-Sept. 9 with a right wrist sprain. 2013: placed on the DL Aug. 21 with a right tibula fracture… ranked 3rd in the Southern League in batting at time of his injury. Last season, he played in just 59 games while recovering from a right shin fracture. Morban, over the course of a season, had exceeded eighty games played twice and 350 plate appearances once. This is bad. Morban’s hitting abilities are good. His health is bad. Not quite Chris Snelling bad, but hell, Snelling played a hundred games once.

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]]>35082015 Bakersfield Blaze Previewhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/04/08/2015-bakersfield-blaze-preview/
Wed, 08 Apr 2015 15:00:04 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20925This marks the first year since 2007 that the Mariners have had an affiliation outside of High Desert. Okay, let’s think about that for a moment. Eight years we were there. Whaaat. But shifting up north to Bakersfield leads me to think of things in new and unfamiliar ways. Park factors, for one. I don’t have any handy at the moment (sorry), but I remember from experience that the offensive environment is slightly inflated and that the quality of the infield is notoriously poor. It’s something that we may not have to consider for very long as there have been discussions of moving the team to Salinas, roughly 200 miles to the northwest, and the Mariners likely bought in early with that in mind. A new park there may figure to be pitcher-friendly.

In the larger scheme, I wonder about other things. While we are nominally leaving the Desert, these have been a hard few years for the state of California and the dry conditions are only spreading. This leaves the team name, Blaze, a little uncomfortable at times. Will it be long before, over concerns of water usage, baseball stadiums in the league switch over to field turf or some equivalent? I say this as someone long suspicious of lawns and their use of resources purely for aesthetic purposes. Long-term droughts and baseball. Someone think of this as a potential thesis topic. Theses have been written about chairs, this is hardly worse.

So, the Blaze. Actually, the whole rotation has something going for each member and the back end of the bullpen looks to be pretty special, I just worry about the guys in between. Catching will present some interesting choices as to who to play and when, as both guys need their defensive time but could pass as DHs, particularly with an emergency catcher already on the roster. The infield is in one of those, “the less said, the better” realms, but the outfield doesn’t have any real liabilities and for prospect watching, is probably the best group we’ll be running out at any level this season. I could be into it. I could see myself listening to Bakersfield broadcasts during the year.

Over the course of this preview, I also manage to keep on subject pretty often. Nevertheless, one of the rotation members is still sort of an enigma, there’s an important hyphenated reliever, in lieu of writing about one pitcher I instead flipped out and went off on a few vaguely connected tangents, mentioned one of the maybe two stock car drivers whose names I know, failed to comprehend an infielder’s transition to High Desert but did get to type “Panamanian” again, talked about favorite injured prospects, favorite gritty types, favorite inside jokes, and a guy whose slugging with High Desert at home was equal to his road OPS who also happens to be named after a famous actor with a famous mustache.

This is another speculative rotation that makes a fair amount of sense to me, surreal as it is after so many years to see actual pitching prospects assigned to the Cal League. Diaz is the likely ace of the staff, which isn’t going to really surprise anyone. The components were a little off from his 4.39 K:BB ratio in 2013, but 2:64 in his first full season isn’t bad, per se. Most importantly, he was healthy and topped a hundred innings, only missing a start or two here and there, and got better in the second half. The various graduations leave Diaz as the best pitching prospect in the system and the stuff supports that with a low-to-mid-90s heater, slider, and change. We’re hoping that as he continues to grow, there are diminished concerns about the slightness of his frame translating to a future relief role, and so far talk of that has died down.

The supporting cast is pretty rad too, though. Take Yarbrough, for example. He was only supposed to be a senior draft signing on the cheap out of Old Dominion, but then he ran an insane 53/4 K/BB in 38.2 innings and had just a .180/.214/.237 line against. The results were especially stunning against left-handers, who failed to draw a walk and struck out in nearly half of their appearances. Yarbrough saw his heater rise up to the low-90s as a pro and gets by with the typical southpaw mix of a change, a curve, and good command, except that he also excels at keeping the ball low enough to get high groundball rates. I’m effectively hitching my car to a train that’s already leaving the station for many, but his size makes me think that the velocity jump could be legit and if added to his existing pitching smarts, that could be a neat combination.

Altavilla was one of the other early arms in that draft and was an interesting little D-II find. Given that he’s short and stocky and fairly high effort in how he throws the ball, a lot of people picked him to relieve long-term, all the more because the Mariners have had a reputation of doing such things. For now though, he’s continued to start in the pros and I figure him to at least give it a go for Bako. The stuff reports have him in the low-to-mid-90s, touching the high end of the mid-range sometimes, and slinging off a slider that predictably exceeds the strength of his change at present. Last year’s results as a pro were just passable, with a .288 average against, some home runs allowed, and a control ratio approaching that dread 2:1 mark, so it should be regarded as a test to have him skip the Midwest League entirely.

It might take me a while to get Misell’s name down (keep wanting to type missile or missel), but he’s similar in profile and numbers to Altavilla while being a couple inches taller and four+ months older. Misell has been in pro ball for a surprisingly short time, having turned up in Pulaski two years ago as a 21-year-old and having no prior track record. The olden days would have had us speculating about age and falsified documents, but those days are perhaps behind us. He was a bit worse in the second half for the Lumberkings despite coming in second in innings pitched. In the Cal League, he might not be able to afford to do that, particularly with his existing home run tendencies.

Zokan had 57.0 innings scattered over four stops last season, but mostly split between Clinton and High Desert. He had only 8.1 more innings with the Mavericks despite seeing three more starts, which should tell you something about something. The command numbers aren’t terrible and he’s long been pretty good at avoiding walks, but with home runs being a warning flag from his first season, it’s perhaps not too surprising to see him struggle. He follows the basic left-hander blueprint save for the fact that his curve may at present be better than his change.

Continuing our pitching staff cognitive dissonance, we have a bullpen that you can look at and claim seems to be all right. It may even be hard to know who the highlight is. Pagan might have a case as an arm with good, but not elite stuff who is appreciated by conventional and advanced metrics alike. He notched sixteen saves for the Lumberkings last year, which led the system, has kept hit totals low, has never had a BB/9 above 2.2 nor a K/9 below 10. If there are complaints about him, it’s perhaps that he’s been old for the levels he’s pitched at and his velocity and his breaking balls are, again, not at the highest tier, though still above-average.

Then again, he has a fair amount of competition from the likes of Cochran-Gill, whom BA at least seems to be a fan of (recognizing that the back end of the top 30, you could probably put forty names in a hat and rationalize whomever you drew out in whatever order). The Hyphenated One is a two-pitch, fastball/slider guy with slightly better velocity than Pagan on average. Through two stops last year, he allowed a lone run and ran a 44/7 K/BB accompanied by a .172 average against.

The three southpaws present will allow the bullpen to play match-up as they need to, or if that’s even a thing one does in the minor leagues. Fry was with Clinton last year and had a lot of walks, even more Ks (ratio 7:3 overall) and a lot of wild pitches. Fortunately, not many hits, nor did the hits go very far, and he was pretty solidly a groundball pitcher. He’s a community college product and at 22, may not be through refining his craft.

Mathis transfers over from High Desert having treaded water there. Curiously, his home run and walk rates were higher on the road, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. He’s a former teammate of D.J. Peterson at New Mexico, doesn’t have good command of his pitches, but he’s hung around somehow? In past years, a return trip to the Cal League was almost always career-fatal for a pitcher. Now, this may not be the case.

Valenza has been a reliever most of the way with the Mariners, which is a shame in that I kind of find it interesting when the shorter guys can stick it out as starters. Despite pitching in full-season ball for the first time last year, his IP totals just barely exceeded what he did over a half-season in Everett in 2013. He’s had okay strikeout numbers for the most part, but seems to miss the zone a lot and get hit when he does make it in there. There’s not really the expected home/road split rationalizing his poor performance in High Desert, so I’m left without easy answers, or explanations for how he manages to stick around, aside from that always valuable combination of “left-handed” and “alive.”

The detour into left-hander talk was in part due to lack of information on the rest of the guys. Pineda was born in Salem, Oregon and was drafted out of Texas A&M, leaving him with probably nothing to do with Michael Pineda. He got a few appearances with the Mavs last year, including a couple of spot starts, but on the whole made his mark with Clinton where he was successful with a contact-heavy approach. This was strange, insofar as he had a 32.8 K% with Pulaski in 2013 and was down to less than half that over the course of his 2014 season. The batting average increased too, by about fifty points, with the walks remaining stable. Oh, baseball.

Brett Ash is a name that doesn’t really look all that familiar to me, which might be a given considering that he’s 23 already and had less than thirty innings with Everett last year with results not worth writing home about. He’s a graduate of Washburn University, which may or may not even have the slightest connection to Jarrod Washburn. For example, their mascot is not a bus which you throw things beneath, but instead, a… what? Ichabod? Ichabod Washburn. Okay. I suppose their rivals aren’t Headless Horsemen? I’m sure some D-II school ought to at least have a dullahan for a mascot. YOU ARE IN TOPEKA NOT RURAL NEW YORK, DON’T CONFUSE ME WITH MISLEADING REFERENCES THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WASHINGTON IRVING. Here’s a Wikipedia paragraph:

On June 8, 1966, only a few days after classes were dismissed for the summer, much of the campus was demolished by a tornado, and completely denuded of trees. Three months before the tornado struck, the Washburn Board of Trustees had reinsured every building on campus for the maximum amount. A week after the tornado struck, summer classes began at Topeka West High School. By the fall of 1966, Stoffer Hall was repaired and trailers were in place. It took years to reconstruct the campus, with students attending classes in trailers well into the early 1970s.

Of course, weird as this all is, the eye caught on “denuded.”

Catchers: Marcus Littlewood, Tyler Marlette, Kyle Petty

It’s peculiar to have a three nominal catchers on a roster where at least two of them need all the time behind the plate they can get. I dig on Marlette’s bat, and feel as if his .255/.306/.465 road line in High Desert last year was passable given that he was .348/.396/.574 at home, but then by counting stats, namely errors and passed balls, he was the worst defensive catcher in the league and a 33% CS% isn’t that impressive either. Combining his offensive abilities with the defensive abilities of Hicks would produce one of the more intriguing catching prospects in the minors, but they sadly have opposite strengths and deficiencies.

Instead, he’s paired with Littlewood, who is entering his fourth year of catching. He’s gotten 100+ games at both Everett and Clinton now, but the bat, while okay, has never been a big plus for him, in large part due to his struggles to hit for average. The walks and plate displine aren’t holding him back and the power numbers, roughly a .150 ISO at various stops, aren’t bad either. Nor is his defense, considering. I suppose he’s always going to be battling in my mind the early hype and draft perception versus the results, but that average is legit bad, so whatever.

The Mariners’ Kyle Petty doesn’t drive a stock car, but he is a utility guy who can catch off and on despite playing most of his games at first and some at third. The profile would be interesting, if he were good enough at hitting, or younger, but I would say that if you’re interested in the utility catcher profile, Wayne Taylor’s the better bet. Petty hit .251/.319/.368 in Everett last year. That’s not very good.

I don’t know where to start with this infield because it’s easily the weakest aspect of the team. Name recognition would point us to a Seager on the infield, the least prospect-y of the brothers. Last year for the Lumberkings, he had a higher OBP than SLG, which would be interesting, except that he had 17.4% of his hits go for extras and struck out over a hundred times. I can’t even say he got better as the weather heated up because his second half OPS was nearly a hundred points of his first-half OPS. He’s around though, just like Burt Reynolds and Moises Hernandez and Joselito Cano…

Lopes was good enough at one point to garner a sixth-round pick. Most recently, he played a full season in High Desert and, while young for the level, SOMEHOW managed to have a worse slash line in all three categories than he had in Clinton. This, is new to me. He did walk more and steal more bases and hit more doubles and triples and home runs, but every time the baseball analytic portion of my brain tries to compare OPSs, I get the whole better isolated and %s stats thing while the rest of my mind just goes “NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE.”

Caballero grants me two rare and annual opportunities: Use of the word “Panamanian” and reference to the trade of beloved infield gremlin, Jack Wilson. This remains the best of what I have to say about him. In fact, it seems a bit puzzling to find him in the Cal League. He’s still young-ish, but last year, between Everett, Clinton, and High Desert (but mostly Clinton), he had a .509 OPS. This, after he had an okay Peoria debut with a .710 OPS and a rather good OBP for a Latin hitter.

As with other somewhat annual opportunities, Hebert is Cajun, so it’s pronounced “AY-bear.” He was touted for his speed on draft day, but then, last year he only swiped twelve bags after nabbing thirty-three the year before. His plate discipline and batting lines were generally worse as well, though a lot of that was a pretty poor 40-game showing in Jackson, which meant back to the Cal League with him. He’s gotten an inning of pitching in the past couple of years, so expect that in a blowout. It’s fun.

Baum vaults over Everett and Clinton thanks to being somewhat older than his competition, or something. He had three walks for every four Ks in Pulaski and not much in the way of slugging percentage. I don’t know who might be injured that would later replace him, nor do I know whether he’s expected to start or just sop up innings here and there as a versatile infield sponge.

Now this is The Stuff. Wilson hit nearly .300, slugged over .500, and had an OBP that rounded up to .400, and I think that’s probably one of the best seasons I’ve seen from a MWL hitter in some time, better in slash line at least than even Nick Franklin’s famed bombing of Clinton in 2010. We figured he’d be scampering up the minor league ladder to the Cal League, but then he had an Achilles tendon strain and a forearm strain, and so overall, despite starting out in a full-season league, he only played in nineteen more games than he had in Everett. I don’t need another Julio Morban-type awesome talent, poor health combination in my life, so here’s hoping that Wilson gets it together this season.

O’Neill’s health problems last year were self-induced with the old fist meets wall routine. Classic. Despite that, TO’N had 41.4% of his hits go for extras and led his team in home runs while playing a grand total of fifty-seven games with them. The K%, which is presently around 30% cumulative and over that for his Clinton tenure, is worrisome, and so I’m hoping that somewhere along the way here, he learns how to make contact on better pitches and learn when to lay off them otherwise. He’s a monstrous physical talent, just a little short on the skill side of things at the moment.

My favorite thing about Barbosa is probably that his profile in BA’s Prospect Handbook opens with “Barbosa has absolutely zero power.” He’s still fun though, stealing fifty-two bases (and getting caught twelve times) which put him in the top ten for the minor leagues. The 74/71 K/BB qualifies as a certain kind of fun too. Basically, he’s a high-energy grinder type who can bunt for hits and slaps the ball around a lot, rendering him really annoying to opposing teams. His xbhs are all legs and his arm is below what you’d like from an elite defender, but man, you gotta root for him a little bit, right? Root for him and hope he doesn’t lose the walks as he’s exposed to tougher competition.

Thanks to a friend’s self-naming conventions, Ian Miller is now Man Iller in my mind. Man Iller was drafted in the 14th-round back in 2013, but saw fewer games in full-season ball last year than he did in short-season the year he was drafted. A lower back strain that was giving him grief. He’s similar to Barbosa in some ways, LH bat, not particularly big, but he has a skosh more power, less speed (but better success rates), and not quite the same extreme walking tendencies. I’d peg him as a fourth OF on this roster who might nonetheless see some semi-regular playing time depending on how they use the DH spot. One could do a lot worse.

Regrettably, in the last calendar year, I have neither seen more Burt Reynolds movies nor picked up on more Burt Reynolds references although I caught a rerun of his guest stint on Archer. Reynolds is 26 now and aged out of prospect range, but he still has certain utilities, and is good for an extra-base knock here and there as his High Desert ISO was .200+ last season. Would you like some bad news? Let’s have some bad news. He hit .319/.391/.600 at home. That’s good! He hit .201/.258/.342 on the road. That’s bad. How bad is it? His home slugging equaled his road OPS. That’s how bad it was. Still, he’s in that Moises Hernandez “Mariner for Life” camp and it’s not like he’s blocking anyone.

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]]>35062015 Clinton Lumberkings Previewhttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2015/04/07/2015-clinton-lumberkings-preview/
Tue, 07 Apr 2015 23:23:28 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20918Did you miss reading thousands of words on things of interest to a narrow subset of the human population? Well good news! Though my prose writing/analytic tendencies are largely occupied with other stuff these days (there’s also going to be a book review on Poetry Northwest’s site sometime soon), I still geek out enough about baseball and prospect happenings that some weird glitch in my brain triggers and I think, “sure, it sounds like a swell idea to write exhaustively on a subject with an inherently high attrition rate! Wheeeee!”

The overhead perspective on this year’s Lumberkings team is that there are some intriguing arms in the rotation who have had a limited or uneven track records so far, the bullpen features a few guys who might be fast-tracked later, the team’s primary catcher won’t be a hitting liability, the infield features a sleeper at the hot corner and a few Latin hitters of some potential, and then the outfield has The Second Coming and some other dudes who I guess are all right by mortal standards.

I’m typing frantically to get some of the other previews in order later (work schedule is not especially friendly at the moment), but in the meantime, the diversions shall take us through talk of baseball’s spread through particular portions of Latin America, twins, names and how one might speculatively pronounce them, bloodlines, teammates, associations one might make based off of initials and positions, a guy who could be on the C/OF track who isn’t an elite prospect, and players whose OBP exceeds their SLG. This somehow ended up more on-track than past entries, despite still not being edited under my usually rather attentive standards. Well, let’s get to it then.

The rotation that I’m working with here is somewhat speculative, so don’t be too surprised if reality manages to deviate from this some. While I don’t know at the moment who the nominal ace of the staff is, one guy who is probably garnering a fair amount of attention is Missaki, a Brazilian signing of Japanese descent. Everyone doubts me when I talk about it, but that was how baseball got to Brazil in the first place. Anywho, Missaki’s calling card is that he has pretty darned good control numbers for a prospect with limited exposure to quality competition. He ran a 15/5 K/BB over 13.0 innings in his Peoria debut and followed it up by going 62/16 over 58.2 innings with Pulaski last season. He’ll be a full-fledged member of the L’Kings rotation despite turning nineteen a few days from now. Stuff-wise, he doesn’t have an extraordinary amount to offer, average velocity, the expected supplements of a change and a curve, but his feel for pitching is reportedly quite advanced and people are excited by the notion that he could add some more velocity down the line.

Horstman is a guy that I’m going to say is in the rotation although it wouldn’t surprise me to see it otherwise. To summarize his career to date, he’s pitched 8.2 innings and had a 10/2 K/BB. Now you know. Horstman was a fourth-round pick as a draft-eligible sophomore out of St. John’s back in 2013. He was thought to be a get if he could be signed, and he was, except that the past couple of years he’s been on the DL mostly with what has been described as a “left elbow stress reaction.” Any time I read, “reaction,” I think chemistry and stuff exploding. But Horstman hasn’t had Tommy John or any other surgery yet, so make of it what you will. He was known as being primarily a fastball-change-up guy with a heater that ran 91-94, though he needed to work on developing a passable breaking ball. Still, he was enough of an athlete to have drawn the attention of his college’s basketball coach, who wanted him to walk on despite being only 6’1″. I’ve written this much about a dude who’s pitched less than ten innings.

Jeffeson Medina has no “r” in his name, provoking the ire of the red squigglies native to most modern spell check devices. He signed as an 18-year-old and was in the VSL for one mediocre season before departing for the states. Such circumstantial evidence would usually suggest that he has some stuff and is well thought of and it’s worth mentioning that after his AZL campaign, he was named the affiliate’s most valuable pitcher. This is heartening, in that his results are not there thus far. In the Aquasox rotation last season, he had a 43/22 K/BB over 68.2 innings and had a .279/.341/.379 line against. While I can’t speak to what he throws, I can speak to the results, which have been well-above-average groundball rates and very few home runs. One hopes for more Ks and fewer walks too, but he has at least that going for him.

Possessing some major league bloodlines, Schiraldi didn’t match his dad’s 1st-round billing and instead slipped to the fifteenth-round in his first year of being eligible at UTA. He boasted a big yacker of a curveball and folks were pretty excited to see him follow in his father’s footsteps at Austin, particularly after a strong tour of the Cape Cod League, but the results didn’t follow. Schiraldi ran a 35/39 K/BB through 64.0 innings with the Longhorns, a year after dominating the competition at a local junior college. His Everett tenure showed some better command, with a 29/10 K/BB in 24.1 innings, but he also gave up three dingers and threw nine wild pitches. He supposedly has heat on the fastball too, just not-good command. He’s a high-risk/high-reward mid-round guy.

Patrick Peterson is sort of a guess for a spot, but he’s out of NC State (go Wolfpack?) and we’ve scouted that part of the country pretty heavily over the years. People who don’t understand how twins usually work will be interested to learn that he’s the southpaw of the two and his brother Eric, the right-hander, went to the Astros in the 37th-round. While it would have been totally awesome to have them pitch against each other in the Appalachian League last year, no such luck. He’s got an average heater, a change, and an improving curve. Pat helped Eric with the change and then Eric helped Pat with the curve. He had a 54/18 K/BB through 49.2 frames in Pulaski last year, if you need stats beyond the general intrigue of twins pitching and how does it work? If one allows a home run, does the other feel a distant shame? I need to know.

The lower levels of the minor leagues are littered with various arms and names that no one yet knows much of anything about. Kody Kerski aspires to Ks and has achieved them in shorter stints. He had 46 of them in 39.2 innings with Everett last year, though they were accompanied by seventeen walks. Throughout his career at Sacred Heart, he was a starter, but his velocity was known to dip later in the year and it was thought that between his approach, his stature, and his fastball/breaking ball combo, that he might be uniquely suited to relief work.

Tyler Herb is one more find by our mid-Atlantic scouts, having done his college work at Coastal Carolina. He’s returning to Clinton after spending 22.2 innings of last summer there and running a 24/6 K/BB in that span. BA reported that he was one of a few guys to see velocity increases once we moved him to the ‘pen and he’s touched as high as the mid-90s.

I may as well continue on through the various other college guys from last year’s draft. Brown is the ‘pen’s resident southpaw and comes via the south as well, Georgia specifically. He was a reliever for the Bulldogs and his career numbers with them look rather odd, in that his walks remained static at around five per nine while his Ks steadily dropped from 6.6 to 3.7 his final year. His tour of Pulaski was much the same and he had a 17/18 K/BB in 25.0 innings. There has to be something there in the way of stuff.

Miller, who came to us by way of Tallahasee where he was one of the baseball teammates of Jameis Winston, mostly started through his college career with erratic results. Sometimes his K-rates were impressive. Sometimes they were not. Sometimes his walks were passable. Sometimes they were in red alert territory. The shift to relief work with Pulaski appeared to have done him some good as he had a 39/8 K/BB through 33.1 innings, but then he still managed to throw six wild pitches.

I’m still not sure how to pronounce Pierce’s first name. It seems easy enough, but is the o long or short? Pierce is like Miller in that once he moved into relief as a pro, his Ks spiked, but then control had never especially been an issue for him at Canisius College, where he had a sub-3.00 BB/9 every year for the Golden Griffins (yes, I wanted to type that mascot name). Rather, it was his Ks that nearly doubled from their previous levels. His junior season was his best by a fair margin and so it wouldn’t necessarily surprise me to see him in the rotation at some point.

The international signings we have to work with are Cleto, whose first name does not contain a z, and Morales. Cleto has started in the past, but seems to be increasingly taking on relief work as of last year. He’s always had two distinct problems: He gives up too many hits and his command sort of sucks. Whenever I see H/9 in double-digits accompanied by BB/9s in the threes and K/9s in the fives, I worry. His command appears to have been worse in relief, but hey, he’s got groundballs going for him. That’s one thing. One thing is objectively more than nothing.

Morales was a four-year VSL guy before showing up in Peoria last season and torching the place, with a 65/15 K/BB in 49.0 innings and a .227 average against. He’s already one of the older pitchers on staff, although it’s hard to say he was especially experienced as his first two seasons combined didn’t see him exceed ten innings and he was below twenty in his third year. Statistically, there’s enough to intrigue, but until we know anything at all about his stuff, it’s hard to know how he’ll develop. Making predictions based on limited information tends to be a pain in that way.

Catchers: Adam Martin, Daniel Torres

For as long as he remains in the system, I will probably confuse Adam Martin and Adam Moore. Big catchers, AM initials, in the 6’2″-6’4″, 220-240 lb range. Deal with it. Martin was a Western Carolina Catamount and played four seasons with the team in which he was pretty consistently one of their better hitters. He was on the Johnny Bench Award Watch List a couple years in a row and has always been on various conference and regional teams, so that he ended up taken in the top ten rounds isn’t terribly surprising. I don’t know what his defense is like on the whole (outside of passed balls and CS%s, which weren’t glowing), but if you’re bored with the more touted non-Zunino catchers of Hicks and Marlette, Martin could turn out to be an interesting adopt-a-player.

Torres was the primary catcher for Pulaski despite not playing a majority of the catching games last year. He’s had more issues getting around the passed balls, but fewer gunning down runners on the basepaths and vaguely has that back-up catcher profile. For his career, he’s been one of those delightful weirdos whose on-base percentage far exceeds his slugging, which isn’t so much attributed to an elite eye at the plate as the fact that he just doesn’t really have power.

On the infield, the corners seem somewhat settled, but the interior may take until gametime to figure out. DeCarlo figures to end up on the hot corner. While I had previously regarded him as one of our mystifying reaches in the early rounds, he very quietly turned in an interesting season with Clinton last year. The .246 average appears to be nothing special, but then when you notice that his OBP was .105 points higher and that he had 38% of his hits go for extras, you start to wonder a little. DeCarlo took most of June and nearly all of July off after being nailed by a pitch, but he came back with a vengeance and hit .350/.447/.500 in August. He’s likely the system’s best defensive third baseman and has a lot going for him on offense too, provided that he can ever hit for average. Since he strikes out more than a quarter of the time on average, we’re still figuring that part out.

Brito will probably be on the opposite end. When he was drafted in the 11th-round out of Puerto Rico back in 2012, Brito was touted as having potentially 70 grade power if not better. Through his last two stops, he’s had isolated slugging percentages of near or above .200. He’s also never had a batting average above .250 and has struck out in about a third of his plate appearances for his career. If I’m digging for positives, his BB% has at least steadily increased by about 2% annually. Brito could be a fun player. I have doubts as to whether or not he’ll be good. There’s a difference.

Speaking of fun, try saying “Gianfranco Wawoe,” or think of how it might be said. I don’t know either but it makes me happy. Wawoe is one of a dwindling number of prospects in system from Curacao and like… really the rest of this infield, he did a brief stint with the team during the Cactus League season. Wawoe had three years in the VSL before getting called to Pulaski last year where he hit .275/.315/.360. He’s another contact-based middle infielder with some speed, except that he’s also shown up in center and left field in brief appearances. I’m going to guess he’s the starting shortstop.

Peguero used to go by Esteilon instead of Martin and I’ll keep mentioning it until he goes back. He’s entering his third season of playing part of the year in Clinton, as a 21-year-old. The first time around, he hit .232/.246/.276 over roughly 200 PAs. Last year, it was .263/.287/.341 over roughly 300 PAs which is nominally progress. He spent part of the season last year on the DL with a hamstring thing. I would say there was enough money invested in him to start him every day, but then the Mariners just released former bonus baby Phillips Castillo and we’re in year four of waiting for Peguero to exceed a .700 OPS.

Two college infielders round out the group which means we have two HS guys, two int’l guys, and two college guys. Representation. Mariscal comes via Fresno State and has a reputation as a pretty solid glove man, though the majority of his Everett starts came at third. He had a .708 OPS in Everett in which his OBP just barely edged out his slugging. You’d expect this kind of profile to also steal a base now and then, but Mariscal has never topped seven in a season and has a pretty abysmal success rate.

Ward was drafted two rounds higher and was formerly a teammate of Brown at Georgia. He saw three stops last year from Pulaski to Clinton and ran a nearly even K/BB during his longest stint in Everett, which was a plus, given that his OBP managed to be .126 higher than a rather unimpressive average. Like Mariscal, he doesn’t have a lot of speed for the basic profile nor does he excel at base stealing. He is left-handed, however. That appears to be the main difference between the two.

Friends, have you heard the Good Word about Alex Jackson? Alex Jackson hit a ding donger to the opposite field in spring training against a pitcher with real actual major league experience and didn’t even appear to get all of the ball. Alex Jackson could’ve been placed in California to start his first full season and I would have been all “whatever.” He could have made it to Seattle out of spring training and I would have thought “Gosh, I hope this doesn’t hurt his development, but otherwise, party down.” I don’t know what there is to say about him that’s serious. He hit .280/.344/.476 in a Peoria debut that was shortened by him taking a flyball off the sinuses. He’s probably the best hitting prospect we’ve had since A-Rod. For whatever else happens, he alone probably makes the Lumberkings worth paying attention to on a regular basis, but this would be true of any roster he was placed on.

The supporting cast is obviously less exciting, but we get through as we can. Morales is a guy that’s long intrigued me because, you know, names, but last season he hit .303/.379/.495 for Pulaski and that got a bit of attention in that you don’t often see walks and power from a graduate of the Latin American program. That said, I’ve learned to regard Pulaski’s stats as somewhat suspect and as of this year, no longer have to deal with that. If he hits or doesn’t, we have reason to believe it as Clinton is just better data.

Taylor is one of the few dedicated left-handed bats on the roster as of right now. He was a part of Stanford’s baseball program, which means the M’s familiarity with him extends back to Austin Wilson and likely before, though he may have some bat questions. These didn’t manifest as a pro, as he slugged six home runs and had an ISO of .179, but then he spent the majority of his summer in the outfield, catching only fifteen games, after having gone through a similar track in college. It’s weird to have a player who is vaguely on the Chris Gimenez track, but Taylor’s catch-and-throw skills behind the plate are reported to be somewhat suspect.

Mack played four years at Miami as a guy whose OBP exceeded his slugging on a regular basis. This hasn’t really held true as a pro as he’s shown more pop last year in Clinton (eight home runs) that he had cumulatively to that point in his career. He’s a bit old for every place he’s played, but one could be on board provided that he played some center field, which he has, but for less than 20% of his total defensive appearances.

Instead, at least until Cousino comes back, I expect that job to be handed to Arby Fields. His profile generally bears a strong resemblance to that of Mack, both four-year college guys who broke into pro ball somewhat older, except that Mack’s game is little more about power and Fields’, speed and on-base percentage. Like a lot of the hitters here, just because he has speed doesn’t mean that he’s great at using it, and he was caught 36% of the time last year. I see him as a placeholder until Cousino gets over whatever, but again, he did hit reasonably well in that suspect APL environment, so maybe you don’t write him off just yet. Or maybe you do. Friggin’ Pulaski.

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]]>3504A Lukewarm Take on the Nelson Cruz Signinghttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2014/12/01/a-lukewarm-take-on-the-nelson-cruz-signing/
Mon, 01 Dec 2014 23:43:56 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20653Given the timing, the weather, and my own sentiments, “lukewarm” is about all that I could muster at this point. Unless you have been hiding under a hole in the ground for the last several hours, you are probably aware at this point that the Mariners have made an offering to free agent Nelson Cruz of four years and $57 million. Not an offering of blood sacrifice on a flaming pyre. Different kind of offering. Except we did lose the #19 draft pick to the Orioles, so there’s that.

Nelson Cruz is cashing in on an age-33 season in which he led the American League in home runs for the Baltimore Orioles. He took that one-year contract in order to build up some credibility as to his general health and well-being as an offensive producer and has succeeded. He is now, presumably, financially secure through his age-37 season although he’ll turn 38 that July. From there, who knows, except that he’ll be $57 million dollars richer. Plenty of smartpeople have already analyzed this move, in terms of the money offered and in terms of the Mariners player archetypes and the risks involved.

My schtick is more attuned to the minor league side of things and with that I have this much to say. The Mariners have long had a depth issue in the realm of outfielders. We have tried patching this with the likes of Abraham Almonte, Eric Thames, Trayvon Robinson, and Casper Wells (miss u) with little success over the years. It wasn’t until two Junes ago that the Mariners began to start addressing this matter through the draft with Austin Wilson and Tyler O’Neill, but as we all well know, development is something that takes time due to player adjustments and unforeseen circumstances. Sometimes, for example, players try to punch holes through walls.

Of our various bits of outfield depth at the moment, Gabriel Guerrero is probably at least two years away from being a viable contributor to the team in the outfield. Julio Morban remains an enigma for his inability to play more than 90 games annually, ever. James Jones is James Jones. It’s unlikely that we’ll have to worry about a declining Nelson Cruz so much as blocking anyone until late in the contract, barring an improbable meteoric rise by Alex Jackson. By then, we’ll shift him into DH anyway and continue batting him fourth just like Kendrys Morales because it’s the principle of the matter.

Here’s the other consideration. Had the Mariners not invested the four years and mucho dinero in Sr. Cruz, they would have likely gone into further talks on the trade market for Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, and the like. Using past rumors as template, the deals probably would have been for Walker+ and would have provided little long-term security on the investment. We presently have Cruz coming off one of his best seasons and have retained our trade chips. The core now includes Seager, Cano, and Cruz on offense, and likely Felix, Paxton, and Walker in the rotation, with a couple of those guys being pretty cheap. That’s not a bad starting point looking forward in the next few years and gets us into the conversation when projecting the top of the AL West standings.

The Nelson Cruz contract will last us four years. My reckoning has that as two years longer than I would have liked and one year longer than I was personally comfortable with. But the Cano contract has already pushed us into “win now” territory and we have done so without blocking prospects or significantly jeopardizing the team’s future. This is probably our big signing, and we may not do much more other than gather incidental pieces for the rotation, outfield, and first base/DH. That’s probably okay. The Mariners project pretty well at least through the next couple of years as it stands.

]]>3447’14 40-Man Preview Extravaganzahttps://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2014/11/14/14-40-man-preview-extravaganza/
Fri, 14 Nov 2014 17:30:28 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20629Here’s a point of perplexity for me: Every year, baseball does a great deal to improve the profile of the minor leagues through active promotion of the flashy components. We get the Futures Game, and we get the Arizona Fall League, and we get the Draft being put on the rack and stretched out to three days with a lot of televised hooplah on day one to get people excited about a player development system that has uniquely bad returns among the sports. And yet, in the offseason, when I’m looking up information on the important dates, I can’t find a single thing on when 40-man rosters are supposed to be finalized in the 2014 season, but I can find information on when the GM Meetings occur even though nothing relevant has ever happened during them. They just happened. You didn’t know it. Who cares? Why not mention a deadline? Why is that important vetting process, without which most prospects are useless, wholly ignored by the sport’s own website? How long would it conceivably take to throw just a line of information on your website? That’s it. I’m through. (storms off)

(storms back) Okay. So the name of the game this year: ’10 high school draftees and early international signings, ’11 college draftees. Those are on the chopping block for the first time. I’m going over more than just the likely candidates here, but if I omit a name that you think is relevant, ugh, I’m sorry, there’s only so many candidates that I don’t expect to be added to the roster that I can fruitlessly cover anyway. Part of the issue is that, with how the Mariners have recently operated their player development system, remarkable players get added far earlier and so this deadline becomes more surprising on average but less sexy. Taijuan Walker, Brad Miller, and Carson Smith would be eligible for the first time— zowie!— if… they… hadn’t already been added to the 40-man some time ago. What we’re left with is sifting amongst the dudes who have not already been Mariners, which takes the enthusiasm out of it. Also looking at next year, which at least now, seems like it will be far more interesting.

As is custom in these updates, the following players have been snubbed from extensive write-ups:

Jamal Austin (lack of walks, excess of weed), Steve Baron (still not hitting enough), Leury Bonilla (beloved, but irrelevant), Patrick Brady (ditto), Yordi Calderon (nice in the VSL in ’13, but awful in Pulaski in 2014), Christian Carmichael (back-up C, never hit), Phillips Castillo (chronic disappointment, but not a disappointment because of the chronic), Min-sih Chen (injuries, never lived to potential), David Colvin (fringe candidate, but missed the last month+), Mike Dowd (batting line that would make Steve Baron blush), Jimmy Gillheeney (hits, dingers, walks, lack of stuff), Luke Guarnaccia (yet to take root outside of short-season ball), Cam Hobson (3.3 BB/9 to 4.9 K/9), David Holman (does not strike out guys), Kyle Hunter (contact pitcher), Seon-gi Kim (hasn’t done much outside of Clinton), Marcus Littlewood (could be turning into a viable catching prospect but I need to see more hitting), Jack Marder (injured the last month+, no standout skill), Nate Melendres (did not pass first double-A test), Brian Moran (recent TJ), Estarlyn Morales (great numbers, great name, never been above the Appalachian League), Ramon Morla (live arm got surgery in first pitching experiment), Jochi Ogando (nightmare walk rate), Guillermo Pimentel (hurt for almost entire year), Kevin Rivers (needed to impress in double-A, didn’t), Brett Shankin (great last-name-as-verb, but walks and few Ks), Forrest Snow (was better last year and hasn’t gotten younger since), along with an assortment of guys who are now minor league FAs.

My lack of a media guide this past season means I’m also possibly omitting guys who are still in the system but disappeared due to injury. A few others, I don’t know the status of because of their international standing. I don’t think Ketel Marte is eligible, for example, because he signed mid-August in 2010 and so I doubt it was for a same-year contract. But I also don’t feel like writing about him, so there’s that too.

There’s also a real possibility that guys like Anthony Fernandez, Carlos Rivero, and regrettably, Ji-man Choi could get flushed out before the deadline, so don’t act like the numbers we have now are actually relevant. They might not be.

Among the other minor league stories of the season, Jabari Blash, while playing baseball in a state that has legalized marijuana use, was suspended fifty games by the sport for said recreational drug usage, proving again that it doesn’t matter what the state says if your employer isn’t into it. So that was something that happened this year. Another thing that happened is that Blash has a slash line that was -.030/-.023/-.013 off his career averages. While it’s tempting to blame that on his “biting that apple,” as it were, he was making great strides in Jackson with his plate discipline (21.5% Ks, 17.2% BBs) before swinging himself into a crater in Tacoma (30.2% Ks, 9.0% BBs). I don’t know if the Mariners policy towards recreational drugs makes any more sense than their policy towards performance-enhancing drugs which, for the record, doesn’t.

Sometimes the mid-range foreign signings take longer to make good on what they have. Guaipe’s command numbers were flat-out bad despite his ERA for his first three seasons in the VSL and ultimately the experiment to see what they could get out of him in the rotation didn’t last too long because, even as the walk rate improved, the Ks were always on that threshold of acceptability. He could throw in the low-90s and had a neat little change, but he was never doing it consistently on account of wonky mechanics. His 2013 High Desert stint was his first year relieving almost exclusively, and while the results there were nothing special (command took a step back, circumstances), this year was leaps and bounds ahead of where he was, in part because he posted the lowest average against and walk rates of his career. He was murder against RHB for Jackson (.197/.228/.282), so I’d see a setup career for him, the question is if he’s better than what you’ve got.

If something so dire as a “loser” comes of the emergence of Jesus Sucre as a guy you can throw baseballs to maybe 30-40 games a year, Hicks is that loser. Thus, any talk of Hicks as an addition starts as a basic conversation between what we have and what we might have. Sucre can frame pitches and has a gun for an arm. More than once has he been at 40-50+% caught stealing for the season. But he has passed balls as a thing that happens to him, which implies that the glovework is fine, but the footwork isn’t. Hicks had two passed balls last year. I didn’t even know minor league catchers could do that, let alone Hicks, who had seventeen and twenty as previous full-season marks. He’s also a guy who historically has had high CS rates, 38% last year, but 54% in 2012 with no clean statistics for ’13. He’s also undeniably a better hitter, with better walk rates, better average, and more slugging, he just strikes out more. I’d take Hicks’ future over Sucre’s, but when you’re splitting hairs on probable back-up catchers, there’s only so much ground to be covered and also you should probably reevaluate life choices.

Ty Kelly got a full season in triple-A to do the things that he does and ultimately not have any decision-maker care that I know of. Why, he even pitched a bit? Talking about Ty Kelly on his own feels a bit fruitless because what he does well and what the organization values are so much at odds that I don’t really know how or why they acquired him. They gave him a lot of plate appearances this year, but when September rolled around, they didn’t have the least use for him even as a pinch-walker or whatever. And he still doesn’t really have a position still aside from spending most of his time at second and third, which, about that, you’re not unseating Cano or Seager. Sorry kid. The other thing is that Kelly walked at a lower rate this year, granted it’s only 15.5% to last year’s 17.1%, but it seems significant when the home runs you’ve gained might be nothing more than the translation of doubles into a phenomena wholly grounded in the PCL. I like Kelly. I want good things for him. I’m a realist. I don’t see the Mariners seeing the same value in him that I can hypothesize at.

I don’t pay as close attention to the minor leagues as I used to, and Kittredge jumped out as a guy who I’d not thought about in much depth before but suddenly had reason to. Kittredge was both versatile and dominant in the Mavericks bullpen, the latter reflecting the strikeouts and the former reflecting that he had twenty-five outings of two or more innings plus another two split between in a brief Aquasox and Generals stints. He’s not new to relief or anything, he has just one start among the 113 appearances he’s made so far, but something clicked for him this year to where he became a force and since I’m no longer investigating these things, I guess no one else did either. Going off the stats, the .288/.351/.464 line he had against LHB leaves me less than happy (for comparison, Guaipe was .254/.311/.433), but how much of that is going to be High Desert? Everyone loved Kittredge’s arm in college, the knocks against him were just that he was undersized then and his academics got him un-qualified from the Washington baseball team. I hope to have reason to learn more in the future, but right now I’m just starstruck by that strikeout rate.

I’ve gone over some of this before, but to reiterate, Lando ran a 30/3 K/BB and only allowed twelve through his first 23.0 innings spanning four starts. Immediately after that, he tweaked his back and never seemed to get mechanically right after that. Or, more directly, stats post-injury: 3-4, 15 GS, 5.08 ERA in 72.2 IP, 66 H (11 HR), 44 R (41 ER), 49/36 K/BB. Gross. The ‘Ners sent him to the AFL to recover some lost time, but he’s still been off w/r/t command and allowing hits, and without the proper delivery, getting innings is something of a formality. The version of Landzuri that survived the Cal League with good peripherals and marauded the Southern League for four starts is worth protecting, if you think he can do that healthy. If you don’t think that he can be healthy doing that or that this more recent version is the real one, then you’re not going to bother.

You always need catching in the minor leagues, but secondarily, a guy who plays center field is also nice to have around. His first full year after we acquired him for Brandon League, Landry suuuuuccked, but this year he was at least all right and if you take out the April where he batted .147/.216/.162 over 77 PA, all the better (then his line is .305/.332/431!). But we have James Jones around already and he can do a lot of the same things, along with walking and hitting for more power, so I don’t know why I wrote even this much text other than Landry was formerly a part of a Mariners trade and someone could conceivably be wondering. The distant rattle you hear is the sounds of wheels spinning. Those wheels are mine.

Since Lara was a guy who made his name in High Desert, I’ll start with the obvious stuff. At home as a Maverick, he batted .351/.405/.629. On the road, he had more Ks, more walks, and a .355/.420/.589 line. Had I the hours to work on it, which I don’t, I would attempt to parse it out and figure out if he did a lot of his damage in Lancaster or wherever, but for now, let’s say that it’s less of a concern than it might be elsewhere. Likewise, the data is supported by some scouting evidence, Lara was a six-figure signing and I’ve heard that the main reason why he’s been at third for much of the 2014 season is that he was blocked there by better prospects (Peterson, Kivlehan). Lara still strikes out a lot, doesn’t walk too too often, but the power from a guy who could at least spot you now and then at the infield and outfield corners (I wouldn’t call it platoon, his splits are about even), he’s intriguing.

Among the possible pitcher additions I’m talking about, I guess Miller is the least likely guy on the list. Two years ago, he had a 3.9 BB% with twenty-two starts in Clinton and another five in High Desert. No one was amazed by the Ks, but managers liked his command as among the best in the league and word was that his secondary offerings had improved to aid his already passable heater. Since then, his Ks have held about stationary but the walks have regressed to where he’s not interesting anymore. That was the thing he had going for him. Now it isn’t. He’s just interesting enough to warrant some consideration, but when there are twenty-nine other teams who might also have guys who are just interesting enough to consider, eh.

While Landry and Paolini stand somewhat close to each other alphabetically and in my overall interest in protecting them, their route to value couldn’t be further apart. As contrast to Landry’s speed, average, and defense, Paolini is mostly a first baseman and left fielder who walks a lot and can sting a ball on occasion. I dig on the walks, definitely, and Paolini has never had a sub-.810 OPS, wow! But, where do you play him? Cano renders any capacity to play second moot, D.J. Peterson is more likely as the 1B of the future, and is he going to dislodge Ackley? I’m not questioning whether he can play left field, well, I am, but Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez. Paolini’s minor league numbers are like those of a poor man’s Edgar. The differentials between his batting average and his on-base percentage or slugging are fine, but the average has never been great and with the translation to the major leagues, what you’re likely looking at is a guy who provides value in fits and starts who, also, happens to have few viable positions. Maybe Lara is better for this general profile, even if his plate discipline is considerably worse.

One caveat as we get out of the gate here: Pries had one relief outing and it was awful. Six earnies, six hits, a walk and a K and a dinger in two-thirds of a frame. Remove those from the mix and he’s got a 3.69 ERA and you start to look at things like his .246 average against. Here are some other considerations I’d have. One, he had a second-half fade. Pre-ASB, he had a .239 avg against and gave up seven home runs in 93.2 innings. Post-ASB, .283 average against and the same number of home runs in only 48.1 innings. The second is that his SR is rather ordinary. His fastball is only average in velocity and the other pitches in his mix, a slider and a change-up, are unexceptional or else his Ks would be higher. It’s the command and a slightly better-than-average GB rate that keep him afloat. I see him as an emergency starter, although I am vaguely curious about how he’d be in relief. Also, he’s a Stanford grad and a switch-hitter. Good for him.

I didn’t expect to be doing this again, but here we are. You know what there is to know about Shipers’ arsenal and signing bonus and vertical challenges, so this year our new data to address is as follows. He started out in double-A and was terrible. He dropped down to High Desert and was great, at least from a runs allowed and K/BB vantage even if xRA just did not jibe with that, which I guess I could see why. Shipers’ line against as a Maverick was .305/.357/.391 and his ERA was below three. Does that make sense to you? It does not to me. On the other hand, his BABIP was .400 while he was there which is way, way, way out of line with career norms which have him hovering below .300 almost everywhere. If I were in charge, which I am not for the record, I would be looking for something from a LH reliever that suggested he could really get LHB out, and sadly, Shipers’ splits are closer to what you’d get excited for out of a starter. So, uh, pass?

One wants some good things to come of one of the few South African prospects we have left. Unsworth has pitched his way into opportunities thanks to being able to spot the ball wherever which, hilariously, resulted in him having a 56/2 K/BB over 72 innings in 2013. His numbers weren’t so silly this year, but he was also pitching in a rather unpleasant High Desert situation and still managed to increase his strikeouts. He was also much better in the second half (70/6 K/BB in 56.2 IP, .283 avg against) than the first (49/13 K/BB in 62.2 IP, .332 avg against), which is generally what we’ll take as a positive trajectory. It may be that his offspeed pitches have taken those steps forward into being legitimate offerings. But the fastball may also be no better than the mid-to-high 80s it was prior to this year, and if that’s the case, I like him, sure, but he’s not the type of prospect that gets much attention in the Rule 5 anyway.

So, now, I’m supposed to make an evaluation of all this right? I figure Hicks to be a lock. Guaipe, Kittredge, Landazuri, and Lara are in the next tier there, with marks against the two relievers for their split issues and limited utility. Paolini is in a spot just after that. I would be surprised if Unsworth, Pries, Shipers, Miller, or Landry were protected. Blash and Kelly remain wild cards based on organizational priorities.

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]]>3441Michael Saunders and Perceived Value*https://blog.seattlepi.com/ussmariner/2014/11/07/michael-saunders-and-perceived-value/
Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:41:02 +0000http://www.ussmariner.com/?p=20614I have a clever memory when it comes to the failed experiments of the Mariners organization. I remember fondly the year where the Tacoma Rainiers tried to field six to seven DHs. I was overjoyed that minor league season when we tried to convert at least five position players to the mound, which culminated in trying to teach a career catcher the knuckleball. And I recall, with less fondness, the beginning of that three-year span where the Mariners initiated a supposedly revolutionary conditioning program that later fizzled out and went unmentioned for the last two years of its implementation. Since baseball remains that sport where from a mechanical standpoint, no one has a clear idea of what’s right or wrong, it certainly seemed like a good idea at the time, unlike the other trials, which were fun!, but not well-advised.

A story that I read during that period but now can’t find in archive (edit: Reader and LL author Colin O’Keefe tracked it down) made comparison between two kinds of strengths, a “lateral” strength, which was presented as the good kind, and the “vertical,” which was bad I guess unless you were Russell Branyan. For the purposes of illustration, the Mariners trotted out two of their younger hitters and demonstrated that one Dustin Ackley was a good boy for having the right, lateral kind of strength, and that Michael Saunders was suspect for having the wrong, vertical kind of strength. A weird spectacle to go through, but surely the Mariners were proud of their recent draft pick and wanted to use the example to vet both him and the new method.

The reality of Mariners fandom is that since Ackley debuted in 2011, he’s accumulated 6.3 in offensive WAR according to B-R and in the same span, Saunders has had 6.4 in oWAR, which includes a rather disastrous -1.1 2011 and fewer opportunities both that year and in 2014. And Ackley gets the boost of a 2.7 oWAR in 90 games in 2011, a clip he has never come close to repeating. The past three years, of course, provide few metrics you can look at that wouldn’t say that Saunders has been the superior offensive performer (7.5 oWAR vs. 3.6 oWAR, as one example). These are facts that exist as we enter the offseason and rumors begin to emerge that the Mariners will be expected to shop Michael Saunders around on the heels of them calling him out earlier in the offseason. Swell timing, guys.

Jeff and Matthew and others have discussed the matter of general management and how, as multiple organizations have gone out to develop their braintrusts and start implementing methods previously relegated to use by nerds, the gap of talent amongst GMs has closed and it’s no longer an easy inefficiency to take advantage of. But the Mariners are not a team that is presently perceived as having management on that cutting edge, instead they use their old methods, have their old favorites, and sometimes things work out for them. Sometimes things work out for the Giants and the Royals too. Sometimes things don’t work out in the same way.

We talk about organization blind spots and how one group might prioritize this or that and do it exceptionally well and another might be deficient. One recurring sentiment, I would guess, amongst new GMs is a tendency to value the players they’ve inherited somewhat differently from the players that they themselves acquire. It’s natural, different philosophies and all. And one thing that we saw as the Zduriencik team got settled was that there was an inclination to remove players who were holdovers and retain those who had the present administration’s stamp of approval.

I don’t know what changed particularly in the trajectories of Ackley and Saunders. We know that Ackley has messed with our hearts and minds so much that we have taken a .245/.293/.398 batting line from last season, as a corner outfielder, and ascribed to it new hopes of improvement. We also know that Saunders re-invented himself as an offensive player a few years back thanks to Josh Bard’s brother and his rubber bands (remember those? remember when we wanted to hire them as our hitting coach?). The lateral/vertical thing of 2010 may not hold true in the same way now. But we are also aware that Saunders has had difficult stretches, last year on account of rushing back from a shoulder injury a bit too quickly and this year, partially on account of a freak illness that caused him to lose fifteen pounds which he contracted from his baby daughter. The shoulder and oblique injuries that preceded that? Maybe those are on him and his conditioning. Maybe they aren’t.

What we also know is what we’ve rehashed the past month+. Saunders was called out by the organization for his work ethic in a 2014 wrap-up press conference. This was the first time Saunders became aware of any dissatisfaction with his personal upkeep. And if we know that much, we can also conjecture as to whether or not the Mariners sat down with Saunders and said “look, what can we do to work together to try to ensure that this doesn’t happen again?” From experience, talking about Saunders and Smoak and other players, we’re also cognizant of another possible blind spot, in that many present Mariners have had to go outside of the organization for solutions to what was perceived as holding back their performances. Which brings to the fore another point: Would Justin Smoak, a young first baseman who never hit above .240 and has slugged over .400 once over a season in his five years in the major leagues, have been granted so many opportunities had he been a Bavasi holdover?

I feel like I’m down to the point where I’m trying to make a pattern on inference alone. I certainly don’t know how involved the Mariners are with player conditioning, for one. Maybe we just hear about the outside efforts because it’s unusual. Working internally is no news at all. But we’ve seen the Mariners play favorites with their guys, we’ve seen them undervalue and sometimes marginalize players who don’t fit into their present scheme (Jaso), and we’re now seeing Saunders, who was not their guy and who in the past did not adhere to the current ideology, talked about as an expendable part in a struggling outfield where another, favored player continues to get chances with less in the recent past to support his case outside of general health. Let’s see where this goes. I’m not especially looking forward to it.

* The Author would like to note for the record that he has been defending Saunders since USSM had its original cast and was holding pizza parties on Capitol Hill, so, probable bias.

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